To Vlissingen

August 28, 2024

It’s Groundhog’s Day again, and begins with Tiziana’s dogs frantically barking at us when enter the kitchen as though meeting us for the first time. It just takes them a minute to settle down though and after that they’re content to lie around our feet while we enjoy another excellent breakfast. Today’s is a particular treat, with an omelet and a stack of buckwheat pancakes - with peanut butter!

We have a fairly long ride ahead of us on a day that’s due to heat up to 80 so we get a reasonably early start. Tiziana stands out on the sidewalk (barefoot!) while we slowly pack up and eventually bike down the street with the blades of Zierikzee’s windmill rising above the houses ahead.

Tiziana’s neighbor waits at his door long enough so that he can make it into the blog also. Perhaps she’ll share its link with him.

The ride begins with crossing the Zeeland Bridge, possibly the longest bridge crossing over open water we’ve ever ridden - nearly four miles. It’s very impressive that the country included a generous bike lane in its design. It’s so refreshing to be in a country where the automobile is not the king of the road. And it’s wide enough that it feels safe even when crowded by one of the occasional bikers (or the lone woman swiftly running across) passes by; but I’m glad it’s a relatively calm day. I wouldn’t like being out here on a day with a 20 mph crosswind.

And there’s an uncomfortable moment when I’m overtaken on the left by a biker from behind whom I hadn’t seen coming. He announces himself when he’s right at my shoulder, startling me and causing me to instinctively flinch and swerve right. Afterwards I’m looking at the railing, wondering if I’m high enough above the top rail that I could flip over and be lost at sea. I wonder if this has ever happened here?

The view west. The dike straight ahead carries the bike path out of town we rode and walked yesterday.

Looking back to Zierikzee from about the midpoint.

The view west along the Eastern Scheld. Its mouth at the North Sea is about fifteen miles out there. With a better lens or maybe a clearer day we could make out the storm surge barrier.

Finally off the bridge we turn west. We miss the turn to the bike path that runs on the seaside of the twenty foot high dike, so we ride the quiet road along the base of the landward side for perhaps a mile until we come to a connector and climb over to the more scenic side where I’m happy to get a good view back at the bridge and Rachael is excited to find a public restroom! We’re only six miles into the ride but of course we break here, not knowing where our next pit stop is coming from.

In what are the best biking miles of the day, we ride the dike path west along the southern shore of the Oosterschelde for about eight miles before finally angling to the southwest. The miles are flat, the landscaped is scenic, and we’ve even got a modest tail wind fluffing us along. Idyllic miles, for sure.

Looking inland, there’s a run-of-the-mill mill I take a shot of in case there’s not a better one ahead today.

Along the Oosterscheide. I think you could get used to this life pretty quickly - in the summer at least.

The Oosterscheide is quite wide at its mouth, wide enough that we can’t really see across here. A long raft of gulls crowds the shoreline.

Common gulls I think, from the smallish look of their bills.

We’re nearing the mouth of the inlet, close enough that we can make out the Oosterscheldekering, the long dam/storm surge barrier we’ve mentioned before.

For the rest of the ride we’re angling across what on the map looks at first like a large peninsula between two large inlets, the Eastern Scheldt and the Western Scheldt. A closer look shows something I missed at first though, that the top chunk of this peninsula is actually an island separated from the rest by another significant body of water, the Veerse Sea. And a still closer look reveals something else we both missed in looking over our route - there’s no bridge across this waterway when we come to it and find ourselves standing at a ferry port for a boat that sails hourly and isn’t due for another half hour. So we wait.

We don’t wait long though, as we’re only there for a few minutes when we see what looks like must be the ferry about midway across the fairly short crossing. Five minutes later it nears the long pier and circles around to position itself. So maybe it’s early or the schedule is incorrect.

That’s our ship, almost straight off the end of the pier.

It’s a shock though when the boat is near enough for a good look and we see that the top deck is completely covered with bikes and cyclists. And once the boat lands, it takes forever for them to offload as they carefully walk down a steep gangplank one at a time, the ship captain’s assistant instructing them to keep their brakes on. And by the time we’re ready to board a long line of bikes has arrived behind us, enough to completely fill the ship. It takes close to a half hour for the unboarding and boarding process to complete and we finally set sail for a crossing that only takes about ten minutes.

It’s no surprise that there are so many bikes on board, for a crossing that only runs once an hour. It’s a long way around if you want a bridge crossing instead.

We’re the first to board. When we do, the captain asks us to lift our feet - and seeing that our shoes are cleated he directs us to the lower deck so the upper one won’t get marred. so we spend the next ten or fifteen minutes while boarding process completes and we wait for the scheduled departure in the company of this interesting man. He’s Finnish, and is full of strongly held opinions that he’s happy to share. He’s been to Florida which he liked well enough, but not to the wicked west coast where immigrants flood across the border and crime is out of control. He’s a Trumpist, thinks Biden is useless and that communist-socialist woman that replaced him will be even worse. So that’s interesting.

Once we’re underway though we’re free to enjoy the ride, and it’s a scenic one. The sea is full of boaters of all kinds, including a couple of incompetently steered sailboats blocking our captain’s path and earning his scorn and derisive shouts. Across the way is the town of Veere, a place that once we arrive and bike to it looks as charming and interesting as it does from the water. If we ever come back to this country it looks like it would be a fine spot to stop for a night or more.

Veere is worth a few shots and probably a few days.

It would be worth knowing what these highlights of its skyline are, but we’ll save that for next time.

It’s taken us nearly an hour to make this one mile crossing - really, we could have biked around and gotten here faster if we’d known. It’s nearly 1:30 when we’re off the boat finally, it’s getting hot and we still have thirteen miles to go so we just bike as we cross the island/peninsula.

Once we arrive in Vlissingen we head straight to the Greek restaurant near the waterfront we’re hoping will be open - we can’t tell for sure from their website. It looks doubtful when we arrive because even though the door is open it’s dark and completely empty inside; but then a guy shows up who nods when we ask if they’re open, and then sits down on one of the tables outside and pulls out his phone to call someone - maybe the cook?

We wait around ten minutes and are about to give up when another guy shows up, affirms that they’re open for business, and a few minutes later returns with water and a few menus.

That’s all the news from Vlissingen though, a large, industrial port that doesn’t have a lot of appeal for us. It’s the right place for us to break our ride today, but it’s not a place we’d pencil in again in the future.

Video sound track: Ginza Samba, by Vince Guaraldi and Bola Sete

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Today's ride: 29 miles (47 km)
Total: 3,546 miles (5,707 km)

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Karen PoretThank you for helping me to relive my own adventures in this area again; within 6 months of my own cycling trip! However, you were able to stop and take wonderful photos..mine are “in my head”..
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2 months ago

Scott AndersonTo Karen PoretThanks, Karen. It is really an attractive area, one I’d like to return to again someday.
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2 months ago