Day 85: Gouda to Lisse

June 19, 2018

We could hear the bells of the church from our room. As magical experiences go, that may not be quite up there with being across the street from a bakery, but it's good! Once out in the street in front of our Guesthouse De Utrechtsche Dom, I looked down to the cross street. There, floating across the field of view were the people of the town, calmly pedalling by on their Dutch bikes, with that characteristic upright posture. Their pedal strokes are often quite slow, so combined with the posture it seems like a waltz. It's deceptive, I know, since me and my fancy ebike have trouble keeping up with any of them, young or old.

We knew (or thought we knew - see below) that today we had only to make a short 40 km hop to Lisse, so we planned to spend some extra time getting to know Gouda. That would include exploring some back streets, visiting at least one cheese shop, and at least looking at the outside of the church, the museum, and the syrup waffle factory. We would also wait for Tourist Information (here called the VVV) open, so as to have a map to help with getting to Lisse, and I wanted to get a video of those cuckoo clock - like figures on the city hall clock in action. Basically we did do all that, though with the exception of the cheese shop everything was closed at the early hour we were doing our circuit at. The photos below show a few of the things we saw, from the outside.

The VVV , that we did wait long enough to go in to, was a disappointment. In Europe, Tourist Information is normally funded by the local town. The objective is to encourage tourists to find accommodation in and to see the town. The idea of cooperating - by having regional information that other towns would also have - sending tourists all over - has not really penetrated. The ultimate example of this was in Dieppe, when I asked the TI about a military evacuation that had happened in St Valery - 20 kms away. We wouldn't know, they said, that's a different town.

This time, Gouda VVV could offer no maps of even their province of South Holland, let alone the whole (little) country. And in terms of Gouda to Lisse by bike, they did have one map, for sale for 9 euros. It just barely covered that 40 km distance. We took a pass, to our later chagrin.

Dodie felt this canal side house with the fluffy quilts and cheese rounds decoration was quite emblematic of Gouda.

Around town we found several momentos of the former Jewish population, We understand there are also Stolperstein - pavers bearing the names of deported Jews and showing the last place they freely lived - but we did not spot any.

Headquarters for stroop waffles - these can now be found world wide. I once even saw them in the Toronto airport.

Several buildings were decorated with murals like these.

Like Amsterdam, Gouda is circled by and laced with canals.

At home, Gouda is just one type of mild white cheese. But here, while the base cheese may be constant, there is a fabulous variety of flavourings, plus variations in aging. We stopped in at one of the two main cheese shops in town, and sampled flavours like truffle, cumin, and pimento. Of course the shop is also filled with large cheese rounds. We saw a lady buy one that was only a prop, but we test lifted a few and they were the real thing - heavy as concrete.

The colour of these is only the wax, but there was also red, green, and yellow cheese on offer.

The cheese lady prepares our modest purchase.

At the old town hall, I patiently waited beneath the clock, intent on filming it for the kids. At two minutes to the hour, a beer truck pulled up nearby and sat there idling with its cooler running. I hope the noise did not make it too much onto the video. The video in any event was hard to do, because the figures are high on a wall and any wavering of the hands moves the picture a lot. Anyway kids, here is the clock in action:

The old city hall, has a carillon clock.

As we drew away from the town there was the phenomenon that exists with every gorgeous old town - the not gorgeous new town. In the interest of balance, the two photos below are also of "Gouda", though you will not find them in the tourist publications.

I included this demolition scene for the kids. They love machines like this. This one really does seem to be eating the building, biting off chucks.

What happened next is really a confused blur. Though we did start off without a map, we had on board a gpx track, and we had the knoopunt system of numbered intersections and the maps that are posted with those, plus bicycling signs pointing to cities, - all the usual tools, that we have mentioned before. We were confident that we would be lounging at our B&B by 2 p.m. if not sooner. But we ran in to a web of obstacles that at times had us just totally stymied. We might have know the Dutch were plotting something. Else why did they put up this sign:

The first type of thing was construction. Though everything in this country is neat and orderly, they seem to be rearranging the furniture (roadways) all over the place. That meant that cycle ways that were supposed to be there no longer were, or that there were detours leading to nowhere.

Once there was a mechanism for throwing us off route, what lay in wait was extensive areas of warehousing facilities. These devilish areas seems to have roads, even bike paths, but in fact there is no way out of them.

Ok, there must have been some way, or we would still be there. But next up was even more extensive areas of perfect little brick houses, with perfect gardens. These miles of neighbourhoods seemed to have no civic centres and no through roads. It was just twiddle and twiddle, jumping from node to node trying to make progress. And just when we might be making progress, the node signage dropped, leaving us scratching our heads.

The final "trick" was in the use of the word "pont", or rather "fiets pont". Now everbody knows that fiet is bike in Dutch. But "pont"? To people who have been in France for three months, pont means bridge. But here, fiets pont is "bicycle ferry". So along we came, looking for node "38" and all we found was a sign that said "fiets pont". Bike bridge? Yes, I guess we had just gone over a little bridge, so what? So around we went, looking for 38, and around and around.

Finally we stopped and asked at a "camping" office. "You have to take the bicycle ferry - fiets pont", said the man. It comes in 45 minutes. Sit down, relax, have an ice cream, you will be on the island in no time.

Island??? "Yes, the ferry goes to an island, but no worries, you cycle to the other end and take the other ferry off". Can you feel our blood pressure rising?

Actually, the ferry came in 15 minutes and the ice cream was good. The young man running the ferry was also interesting to talk to. He works here for three months and spends the rest of his year in Thailand. (His wife is Thai).

The ferry on the other end of the island was just a trivial 30 second canal crossing, so soon we were getting quite near to Lisse, the nominal location of our B&B. But now Holland rolled out its next little trick - canals. If you are at A and are going to B, just over there, it may not be as close as it looks. A canal in the way means going to look for a bridge. The bridge could be 5 km away, and for us, it was.

We also invented a detour for ourselves, to find food - since at a B&B there is normally no food around until breakfast. In that vast jigsaw puzzle of housing we had been passing through all day we saw no food outlets. We can only assume they were on some streets we did not see. In Holland, retail outlets are often so discreet you may not be aware of them.

We cycled to downtown Lisse, though our place was out in the "suburbs". We had to ask after a grocery store, and even when we got there we had to look hard, so discreet is Albert Heijn.

Once you find the small entrance, this hidden "strip mall" appears!

Another 5 km and we made it to our B&B - a gorgeous place out in the fields, with a windmill nearby. It is called De Zonnehoed. When I asked Martijn, the owner, about the meaning of the name, he referred to a type of sun flower (though Google Translate gives the meaning as the "Sun Hat"). Martijn was at pains to point out that these were not sunflowers a la Van Gogh. But when I denied I had ever heard of Van Gogh, he was temporarily exasperated. Why had I denied Van Gogh? It was the pronunciation. He said, I think, "von chugghh". We agreed that foreigners, like me, can be really ignorant!

Now I too have a window with (fairly) symmetrical decorations. That's a bike path out there, of course.

P.S. Against all odds, swan photos still seem to be "liked" by readers. So here is one more. I am also venturing another water lily!

The first time I have seen a swan like this.

The canals here have many lillies, some like this, some yellow, some pink.

Today's ride: 75 km (47 miles)
Total: 5,695 km (3,537 miles)

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