Melt down

I’ve been fighting my bad back and the old knee is giving me some gyp too but we’ve been making good progress until we reached our first tent site of the tour.

It was a fab site, the showers and toilets were better than most hotels, a bit like you’d expect in a very posh gym on the day it opened and the Germans next to us got told to shut up by some annoyed Dutch around 10:30 saving us the trouble of getting out of our sleeping bags, but overall it was a good place to stay, despite the fact it poured with rain all night and we got a disturbed night’s sleep.

We set off on a dry morning and after getting the tent dry and packed up headed for our rest day stop in Middelburg and got about 20km in on a normal very flat and not too windy day and I just ran out of steam. So half a family bag of fruit pastilles, 2 biscuits and a raisin granola bar later we plodded on and made it into the wonderful town of Middelburg with the fair in town.

After an immediate stop at the first fritterie to restore some more energy we checked into our Veggie hotel, that was easily the best place we’ve stayed at so far and I went to sleep for 2 hours!  I’m getting old you know….

We had left our friends in Naarden after a great weekend and then done a “best of NL town” hop southwards, taking in all our old favourites and just marvelling at how prosperous the whole place looks compared to the UK.

The hotels have been cheaper then back home, and much better quality too, so has eating out. Bizarre how the Dutch get paid about £20K more than us yet so many things are cheaper here.

Each of the towns we stopped at has had a quiet town square lined with restaurants heaving on any day of the week and completely traffic free.  Gorinchem, a town we used to come to a lot in Taffy, also has a ferry service that takes off like an aeroplane and reaches it’s cruising speed of 38kph in next to no time.

We love these ferries and shortly after our high speed crossing we took a tiny 3 bike boat that crept across a canal peacefully in the middle of a national park.

Linda and I had talked about Breda, our next stop, heaps.  Linda thought we had been and didn’t think much of it, I can’t remember what day of the week we’re on so have no chance of knowing if we’ve been anywhere until I’m there.

We hadn’t. And of course it was another gorgeous town.

From there we headed into Belgium and almost immediately back to NL as we followed the border to Bergen Op Zoom. The border runs down the middle of roads with houses on one side in NL and the other Belgium.  Who owns the white lines down the middle?

Of course, effectivly there’s no border and people cross back and forth all the time to shop work etc.  Take back control you suckers… Oh wait, how did that work out for the UK?

It’s fabulous to be border hopping and we even got to cycle from country to country as I weaved down the middle of the road.

We cycled into Bergen town square and had a drink watching the world go by before tucking into a Mexican with pink Margaritas. Excellent food too.

From here it was onto Antwerp which has one of the most spectacular squares in Europe. It’s extraordinary with the Guild houses lining one side giving you a feeling of the wealth and power the people who owned them had.  They are grand by today’s standards and must have been quite spectacular when they were originally built.

Outside the centre Antwerp though is more shabby than anywhere we’ve passed in NL and we headed back into NL towards the coast past 25km of  petrol chemical works and docks. It was huge, but a perfect cycle path and easy route out of the city.

Once we got back into NL we turned to head into the wind, which seems to be the default state in NL.  The route had two cycle paths adjacent to each other, both right on the coast.  One on top of the dyke and one at the bottom.  The top one had signs with wind socks on and we, like all the other cyclists, stuck to the bottom as by now it was blowing a hoolie and was a bit of a slog for 40km to reach out campsite.

This of course is probably why I ran out of energy having used it all up to get to the campsite.

But after a lovely day off in Middelburg, which is another gorgeous town with old pedestrianised streets and a billion cycles all over the place we headed for the Vlissengen ferry to head south.

We went on this year’s ago with Frankie, our first motorhome, but it’s now just a bike and passenger ferry running every half hour with space for 150 bikes.  The cycle route goes right to the ticket desk and we got our ticket with 58 bike spaces remaining and a huge queue of bikes still behind us.

Leaving the ferry was like a marathon starting with the ferry bikes joining the already heaving cycle path along the coast and through the dunes.  Of course these days everyone has e-bikes and no one, except the racer boys and girls, has a normal bike.

Despite the path being wide enough for 4 bikes we had to keep slowing down to wait for gaps to get past all these e-bikes. What’s wrong with you guys, why are you going so slowly that a heavily loaded tandem with the aerodynamics of a brick into a strong breeze can over take you?

It took us about 20km to get to the front of the pellaton for pensioners and have some free road in front of us…heaven…#bloodyEBikes!!

We stopped for supplies, as we do daily. I’m not allowed into the shops. I have to wait outside like one of those lonely spaniels waiting for their owner with the big sorrowful eyes occasionally making a sad whine… Well I don’t do the whining, but you get the picture.

I’m not allowed in (quite rightly) as I’ll come out with a new torque wrench, a German survival tool and some weird Habernero, lime and mustard crisps and without anything I was sent in for. Linda’s had enough of that so she goes in and I sit next to the spaniel and we both exchange a look of sorrowful patience….

The coastal ride was gorgeous – the dunes were lumpy and we loved, once clear of the PellatonPensioners®, seeing if we had enough momentum to crest the next peak without pedaling or falling off. It’s like a roller coaster for bikes! Obviously does wonders for your average speed, but hey ho.

We crossed back into Belgium along the coast and into Knocke Heist and really liked the whole coast down from the ferry. Very classy and quite quiet too. All the Butlins type camps looked really posh and the static caravans more like designer lodges.

We eventually left the coast and headed inland to Brugges for a Belgian chocolate fix/ sorry overnight stop.

We’ve been here before but never winding our way in on the bike in summer along the amazing streets straight out of a period drama.  The lack of cars makes this so much fun to cycle through and gorp at building after building.  You can even cycle into the main square along with the cycle police guys.

Our hotel had underground parking for bikes and we freshened up and went for a walk, dinner and an ice cream.  It’s one of our favourites places, though the lovely temperature and blue skies sure helped.

They’d even left chairs around some of the squares for you to pull up and just sit down and watch the world go by under a tree.

After Brugges it was back to the coast at Oostende, which is mainly a new town thanks to the wars, but the main church still stands and the occasional grande building hinting to it’s former days as a classy seaside resort.

But for a new town it’s very nice. The promenade goes on for miles and miles and they allow you to cycle among the thousands of pedestrians. It’s all very civilised, with no one racing along – even the racer boys and girls, and we thoroughly enjoyed it and where quite sad to say goodbye to it as we headed in land to reach out last hotel in the EU, before we head back to the UK.