Sunday 3 August 2014

Onwards through the Netherlands

Since our last post we have made it to the little town of Grou, near Leuwarden in the Freisian part of the Netherlands. Today we are having a day off from cycling as the past two days have been quite tough.

We had two choices of route going north from Alkmaar. We could either keep following the coast and get ferries between the islands of Texel and Vlieland, or cross a 30km long dyke through the Wadden Sea. In the end we chose the dyke as the islands get very busy with tourists and we could not be certain of getting a campsite each night. 

After our soaking south of Alkmaar we have had very good weather with continuous sunshine, which is nice but brings it's own problems as we are constantly applying sun cream to the kids (and forgetting about ourselves). We have established a daily routine which suits us. Seb usually wakes us up at about 6:15. He is very vocal until he has breakfast so we rush to do this before he wakes the whole campsite. We then pack up and are away by 9:00. Both kids are very helpful in taking the tents down and Emily is in charge of pegs. 

In the morning Seb goes in the trailer and Emily in the bike seat. Seb goes straight to sleep and we cycle until he wakes up. We try to get the majority of mileage done in this time whilst he is asleep. He can easily do 90 minutes. Emily loves the bike seat and is constantly asking questions about the passing scenery, most of which start with 'why'. 

When Seb wakes up we have a long break at a playground and lunch, and they swap berths for the much shorter afternoon cycle. We arrive at the campsite early which means we can put the tents up, make dinner, find yet more playgrounds, wash and go to sleep. They are usually both asleep by 7pm. 

The first stop north of Alkmaar was with our friends Wil & Jacques who rather conveniently live on a campsite. Unfortunately the campsite was full so we had to cycle on to the next one. However we joined them for a lovely BBQ.

The next day we cycled to a village called Den Oever which is at the southern end of the Afsluitdijk. We wanted to cross the dyke in the morning whilst Seb was asleep as there is little shade and not many places to stop. 

The dyke is a motorway and cycle path through the sea. We luckily had a tail wind so cycled it fast - 30km took 1hr and 20 mins. It is dead straight so you can see other cyclists coming from quite a distance and the only landmark is a service station half way across. There is nothing like it in the UK and is quite a unique experience. 

The next day the wind direction had changed making cycling a lot more difficult. It felt like we were going uphill all day even though it's flat. There is little protection from the sun making it relentless. You can tell the prevailing wind direction from the way the wind turbines are pointing so if they are pointing away it's going to be a hard day. 

Over the next few days we'll go to Groningen and then into Germany. 




No comments:

Post a Comment