If you can survive this...: You can survive anything!

August 10, 2016

First of all please accept my most sincere apologies for the delay with my posts. I'm sure some of you may have come to the conclusion that our story had ended with my happy reunion with Dea, yet, whilst I agree that would make for a heart-warming finale to any sequel, there is more. We still had to ride together to Copenhagen, and I shall now, belatedly, reveal what happened on our cycle there. The closing scene, I promise, is not far away.

We spent most of the morning in bed at our AirBnb host, before eventually summoning the energy to begin our cycle to Denmark. Heading for the centre of Rotterdam through an industrial area on the fantastic Dutch cycle ways I was extremely disheartened by the number of mopeds that whizzed past us at great speed. It was a great shame. I had so looked forward to returning to Holland because of the amazing network of segregated bicycle paths that would keep us away from fast moving traffic, and now it seemed that fast moving traffic was nowadays not only allowed on the bicycle paths, but almost outnumbering the bicycles, and I felt I had to keep my wits about me almost as much as I did on the roads. It seemed a bit daft to me that the Dutch have invested so much in this cycling infrastructure to then also permit mopeds to use it and ruin the whole enjoyment of cycling.

Fortunately as we got into the city the number of bicycles grew to vastly outnumber the mopeds. We didn't see too much of Rotterdam, passing through it and only stopping to buy gas for our stove and take a short break next to a canal. Here another touring cyclist stopped to ask us for directions. He was a very young man who told us he'd been to a juggling convention in Amsterdam and was now cycling his way home to Bordeaux. He had no map or gps, only a compass, so I told him to head south and he should be alright.

We left Rotterdam and cycled north, finding somewhere to camp in some woods. I made spag bol on the camping stove and I'll tell you what, I did a fine job of it too. Dea really liked it I think, or at least she said she did because she is nice. We were both excited to be camping together again.

The next morning we again put off getting up, this time because of the sound of rain on our tent. But it didn't seem like it was going to stop, so finally we did get up and rode in the drizzly rain towards Leiden. Along the way we played games, including my old favourite 'Spot the windmill' and 'Twenty questions.' This game ended in farce when I thought of a spider and Dea failed to guess it correctly because she did not know that spiders have eight legs.

"Everyone knows spiders have eight legs Dea."

"No, they don't."

We stopped in a bus shelter to hide from the weather and take a break, and a man came along. He was about fifty and wearing wellies and he came and took a seat with us to wait for his bus. He was a peculiar sort of man but in a very endearing way and he talked to us of the 'extraordinary weather.' It wasn't really all that terrible, but he said it was the coldest 11th of August in 25 years, which seemed a fantastically specific thing to be sure of. Impressed that we were cycling on such a day, he told us, "If you can survive this, you can survive anything!"

Come on Dea, if we can make it through this we can make it through anything

We continued on into the dunes that run up the west coast of the Netherlands. I'd been here before, many years ago, and I knew it was a beautiful and interesting part of the country, something that was true even in the rain. For such a densely populated country there was a feeling of being somewhere much more remote as we rode on the paved path through the shrubby dunes. Along the way we spotted a lot of deer, the stags standing proudly with large antlers.

We wild camped again that night. As we sat making burgers in the porch area of the tent to avoid getting wet a big spider came along.

"Look, it has eight legs," I said.

"Well, okay, they have eight legs, but I don't think everybody knows that. Why don't you make a poll on your blog and ask people?"

"Well, I could. But I'm pretty sure it'll be 100% that know they have eight legs."

Dea thought for a while about the idea, then said, "The problem is, people might Google it first."

10th August 2016 - 44km

11th August 2016 - 59km

Today's ride: 103 km (64 miles)
Total: 56,393 km (35,020 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	7
Comment on this entry	Comment	0