Day 35: To Veghel

September 13, 2022

I was up with Kevin at 6:30. He is still waking up every couple of hours in the night and Dea isn’t getting much good sleep, so I took him out of the tent so she could get a bit of peaceful kip. The campsite had a nice indoor space where us boys could hang out for a couple of hours before our day really started.

When our day did get started we had a lot of great cycle paths through forests and open land covered in heather. It was almost worth paying 22 euros for, although it was also very okay that we didn’t have to. In one section there were animals - advertised as buffalo but looking more like bulls to me. They had a huge space to enjoy, but two of them had chosen to lie on either side of the bike path, making an extremely intimidating gate that we cycled carefully through.

Closer than I would ideally like my baby to be to a bull.

Not long after the bulls we came across six horses, three of them little foals. One of them was curious about Dea’s bike, but it wasn’t as intimidating as a bull.

The nice cycle path continued for a good ten kilometres or so.

We took our one break of the day at a rest area in the forest. It was another lovely place to stop for a couple of hours.

During this break we came up with a new idea for a game. There is always a bit of uncertainty about whether Kevin has pooped in his nappy or not and we had recently started saying what percentage confidence we had that there was a poo in there when we thought he needed changing. “Let’s make it a game,” I said. “You say what percentage you think and then if you’re right you get that many points, if you’re wrong you lose that many.”

“Okay well I am 65% sure,” Dea said, before opening Kevin’s nappy and giving a big, “Yes!!”

This was clearly going to be a game changer in the level of enjoyment gained from opening a nappy and finding poop inside.

An hour or so later and Kevin again made a very loud farting noise. It sounded so much like a poop. We looked at each other knowingly and Dea got excited again as she reached for the changing bag. “Wait! It’s my turn!” I said.

This was clearly also going to be a game changer for our enthusiasm for being the one to change poopy nappies too.

I took my son, lifted him up and sniffed his butt. It was pretty stinky. “Okay I’m going 90% on this one.” I lay him down and opened up his nappy. Nothing.

Maybe we need to wash these leggings, ‘cause something smells like poop.

After that disappointment it was hard to lift myself to get back on the bike, but our day wasn’t done and we had a host waiting for us in the next town of Veghel. We left the forest but it was still very fine cycling into town. Just as we got into the town centre Kevin started to cry so we took him out and gave him a cuddle before walking the last couple of blocks.

Our hosts were Janneke and Zoran. We had actually met Janneke before, high on a mountain pass in Tajikistan in 2017 when she had been on her own world bicycle journey. It had only been a brief conversation as we went opposite ways, but Dea had kept in touch and she had offered to host us. So now we met again in quite different circumstances, very far from a Tajikistan mountain both in terms of geography and also life situation. Janneke now has a home and a dog and a job, a partner, Zoran, and a baby on the way. They also have a lovely little garden full of vegetables where we chose to pitch our tent rather than stay inside and wake them every couple of hours to a screaming baby. They will get to enjoy that themselves soon enough.

Conversation over dinner included talking about the difficulties of coming home from a long trip and settling down to a new way of life. It seems like it takes everyone a while. And of course there was a lot of talk about having babies. Not for the first time we heard about how little maternity leave parents get in the Netherlands, only three or four months for the mother and a couple of weeks for the father. I find this really shocking. I couldn’t imagine how we would have coped and feel so grateful that the mother gets a year in Denmark and that I can be flexible with when I work. Also with this trip, we have had so much time together all three of us and it has been so precious, so amazing. I find it just so sad that there are people putting their babies in daycare at three months old so that they can go to work. I can’t quite get my head around that.

But my feelings about Dutch maternity leave were interrupted as I noticed the very well behaved Kevin had made rather a loud noise from his backside again. Dea was enjoying her dinner so I selflessly offered to take him out and change him. “80%” I said to Dea with a smile as I left the dinner table.

I walked down to the tent, got the changing bag out, opened up Kevin’s nappy.

Nothing.

Current scores in the poopy nappy predicting competition: Dea 65, Chris -170.

Today's ride: 20 km (12 miles)
Total: 1,062 km (660 miles)

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