Day 38: Cuijk to Straelen

September 16, 2024

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Yesterday was really fun, with us running into at least two reenactments, which we captured a bit of on some videos. Internet has been too weak to put these here, but now here at least is one new one:

By the way, in case you missed it yesterday and have four minutes to waste, here is a replay of the hit "Bang!"

We left the BnB that Dodie had found at the end of last night, with hugs all around with the lovely hostess, Diandra. We also gave it a good review on Booking, while crafting a rotten one for the Taurus Hotel.

To get going again, we had to cross the river right at Cuijk. The ferry was right there, starting to come to us in the morning mist. The ferries seem to cross back and forth continuously, so we have never had a long wait, for the many crossings made in a day.

As usual, the kids were out in numbers, heading to school. We didn't have to interact with them this time, which is good because they can be a bit wild, or let's say exuberant!

From the ferry, we had a look back at Cuijk, or at least its church.

Now on the other side, and for the rest of the day generally, we passed through either peaceful villages and suburbs, like in the first photo below, or through fields, meadows, and crops, like in the second photo.

Out in the fields, aside from the cows and sheep, we did see some of our other slightly unusual animal life:

This turned out to be a Buzzard. It was smaller than usual, so we were thinking it could be something else, but no.

The Gray Heron is quite common, but here is one hanging out with cows.

And this is the first Stork we have seen this trip!

And how about horses? We are seeing so many these days. They do not seem to be ridden, and they are not pulling carts or plows, so what is their game? Do they get exported as special types?

We passed into the town of Gennep, which seemed to do a lot of advertising of its historic centre. When we got there, we found some overhead decorations, but that was about it.

Coming out of Gennep we had to cross the river again, but this time on a bridge. Once over the bridge, we knew we needed to get down to the bike path along the river. But all we saw was these stairs:

We were at the top, staring down, and preparing for a "discussion" in which I would claim that I could just roll the loaded bikes on down and Dodie would insist on pulling the bags and then (me!) doing several up and down trips. Before we could even get rolling with this debate, a lady came along and told us that lots of people go flying on this challenge. But, she said, if we would go along the road for not too far, then we could take a turn and circle down safely. What sealed the deal was that she said the circle route passed a restaurant, and that restaurant had appelgebak (apple pie or cake), home made!

We took the lady's advice and went for the circle route. Often in such cases you may politely thank the person for additional suggestions, but really you are not going to follow them. But then again, maybe you will! Here you see that we did, and the appelgebak is in the lower left.

It turned out the lady (and her dog) had also stopped at the restaurant, so it was gratifying when she came over and could see we had fully followed her advice.

We said a nice final goodbye to the lady and dog, and took to the path by the river. We passed a sign of the "Let op" variety that so tickles our childish fancy. This one features "slagboom", which no matter what we fantasize, actually means "barrier".

Next along the path was yet another concrete bunker. This is part of a line of them along the Maas. There was an explanatory panel, but like every other info panel along here, it was Dutch only. That seems like a strange situation for an international, official bike route.

We continued now past various towns and fields, all much the illustrations that started this page. But when we paused on a small bridge, and native English speaking voice from behind made a comment about "from Canada". This turned out to be Brad and Loren, from Colorado. They too were on a 90 day wander around Europe, maybe also ending up in Spain. Of course what ensued was the classic cycle tourer meetup jabber about the route, equipment, and so forth. It's always a lot of fun. This was Brad and Lauren's first long tour, and since they had only vaguely heard of cycle touring blog sites, I complimented them on launching such a long trip without moral support, such as we draw from Cycleblaze. We ended, of course, with hopes we would meet again - maybe in Spain!

One thing, they rather liked our "Canada" tags, and thought they should have something with a US flag. But they are well aware of possible anti Trump backlash, from almost all Europeans. For that reason, they are already sporting a Harris Wallz button atop their pack!

That bridge crossed a stream that was powering a water wheel in a small park. We took the opportunity of going down to it, to pull out our lunch. It was interesting looking at the wheel arrangement close up. The water is channeled to a race, where it pushed the paddles of the wheel. It's great to think how this provides free energy, forever, or until the paddles rust out. The whole thing had me thinking about just how much power a thing like this had, and would that be enough for many common uses. That's when I completely independently (of the rest of humanity through history) invented the idea of a dam upstream from the wheel!

Just by the water wheel was a building that seemed like a private residence, but which was large and beautifully landscaped. Worth a photo:

We next came to a large field with orderly rows of some kind of tall shrub, with leaves coming from a narrow woody stem. We looked at this hard as we cycled by, but could not identify it at all. The mystery was solved as we came to a further field with the things in bloom - tree roses! All through our ride these last days, we have passed very large plantings of nursery type stock. This country, of course, is famous for that kind of stuff.

Today is the one day on which we would pass into Germany. I have been looking forward to that, for the main reason (of course) of dropping into a German bakery. In the shot below, you see that we made it!

Our destination was the town of Straelen, which is not far from the border. Aside from any bakeries (which we have not visited as yet), we noticed some other differences from Netherlands. The houses seemed bigger, for example. And especially, the roads are bigger -wider. See the random photo below.

In the centre of the town itself, we did not see anything particularly worthy of a photo. There were scattered around, though, some realistically painted statues. So we do have a snap of one of those:

We arrived at our hotel Zum Siegburger, and were strangely soothed by the familiar German accent of the owner. We also noticed another immediate difference from Netherlands - a relatively huge room for the price, and no ladder-like stairs to climb. Not that we are at all down on Netherlands, its people or hotel ladders, but just sayin'.

Large room, with typically arranged fluffy quilts.

Realizing that we truly are now in Germany, we arranged for the breakfast tomorrow. It could of course be any level of jammer at all, but the owner spent some time with us playing down French breakfasts, so he could have something good up his sleeve!

Today's ride: 63 km (39 miles)
Total: 1,813 km (1,126 miles)

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Kathleen ClassenI can’t wait to hear about your breakfast. Fingers crossed for you that it is a great one!
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3 months ago

Patrick O'HaraI imagine you'll be on the hunt for Tortes in no time.
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3 months ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesTo Patrick O'HaraNot this time, it was only a one night stop. Next spring however is another story as we ride across Germany to end in Leipzig.
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3 months ago