Monday 12 August 2019

Time to Blog Off...


For anyone who wants to know
This is how far we had to go
To cycle round the Baltic Sea
To camp in the wilds - be totally free.
To battle the weather come rain or shine
To pedal on flat, or up an incline,
And now that it's over and once we recover
We'll be looking at maps and planning another!


Days 61 - 64     Distance - 176 km

Amsterdam - Home


Our last few days have proved to be some of the toughest yet as we cycled into near gale force winds and torrential rains, and endured a rather rough 8 hour ferry crossing AND the London traffic...
Amsterdam was great, and the campsite in the city was a reminder of more youthful days - it was like the aftermath of a great festival - scattered bodies that hadn't quite made it into their tents, that were either sound asleep, or in utter hysterics (you know what I mean!).


The campsite was right next to the tramline, so the bikes had a rest while we enjoyed the city, with its charming buildings and amazing graffiti...



We feasted on poffertjes - little Dutch pancake delights made at this family run stall in one of the markets...


And they fuelled us nicely for our rainy ride to The Hague - the city which houses the UN's International Court of Justice. It was cycle paths all the way, part of which went for miles through coastal moorlands and made for a lovely day's riding despite the weather.


The campsite was about a 5km ride through beautiful woods and streams to the city centre, and the pond weed was fluorescent!


We were lucky enough to chance upon a street-van-food-festival so we feasted well, and then took a beer down to the Binnenhof - one of the oldest parliament buildings in the world still in use.


As you can see the weather was building, so even though we only had 35km to cycle to The Hook of Holland the next day we left early. And good job too as it took about 3 hours to battle through the 60km/hour winds and a few proper soakings! We were sure bad luck would continue to thwart us and the ferry would be cancelled and we'd have to endure another wet camping, but no, Stena line sailed, not smoothly, but we took plenty of journey food and beer to see us through! It rolled (literally) in an hour late so we landed in Harwich in the dark - we're not properly equipped for night riding - so let's just call the 5km cycle to the guesthouse...
exciting.
We caught the train to London, managed another brief city tour and pedalled the final 40kms back to my mother's house. 
She's away. 
In fact, our timing has been off the whole trip. We missed friends in Sweden, Denmark and Germany also. Even Queenie was away when we arrived at Buckingham Palace!


So that's it folk's. Until we pedal off dreckly next time...!

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