August 25, 2015
To Vlijmen in the wind: A day of major rivers
The man in the ferry yesterday told us that you really need an ebike to cycle in the Netherlands. I understand what he means we cycled the whole way today into a howling head wind.
The important part of today was the fact that we crossed three major rivers. The first was the Nederijn which is one of the three branches that the Rhine goes into to as it heads for the coast. This on is the one that goes through Arnhem and is a relatively small branch. We crossed it not far from last night's hotel. What was really amazing was that crossing this at around 8am there were huge numbers of secondary school kids doing exactly the same thing. They certainly could speed along - we must have looked like lumbering old draft horses.
Between the Nederijn and the Waal (a bigger branch of the Rhine which goes into the sea near Rotterdam) it was a garden of Eden. There were lots of apple, pear, cherry and strawberry orchards and numbers of nurseries growing trees, it seemed to us there was no way that all these could be used here - there were just too many. When we came to cross the Waal there was a massive bridge across it, it had a protected cycle way but went up high so at the top the wind was terrific, I had to get off and push my bike as I thought I might be blown over the edge.
We were now in a fairly small tongue of land between the Waal and the Maas. The rivers here are so close together it is somewhat amazing that they haven't joined up. All along we had been scouring the small towns for places to have coffee but they either had no services or the coffee places didn't open until the afternoon. However just before we came to the crossing we came to 2 important things the first being a canal joining the two rivers and the second a restaurant where we could get a very expensive cup of coffee.
It was easy once over the bridge to set the GPS and find this hotel which is in a little town at the edge of the much bigger city of s'Hertogenbosh. It has beautiful houses and I imagine that the more well to do residents of the city live here. We have had a good walk around and the church opposite was open. It is hard to tell the approximate age of these red brick churches but looking inside I imagine it is fairly old.
The wind will continue tomorrow with just the odd shower but it looks as if it may rain all day on Thursday so if it does we will stay put or do a very short distance that day
Today's ride: 59 km (37 miles)
Total: 1,146 km (712 miles)
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