July 21, 2013
Day 10: Katwijk to Westeinder
Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for today's Guest Writer... Penelope !At around 3am this morning, we established that our travel alarm clock had been temporarily mislaid. With no Czech tourists in ajoining tents adamant to wake us with loud chatting at 6am, I was a little concerned that we would end up over-sleeping and not breaking camp until midday, or thereabouts. We ended up waking at around 8:30 and had a leisurely start, breaking camp at 10:30 with a noticeable lack of breakfast and coffee (for John). From a female perspective, the toilet and shower facilities at Camping Zuidduinen were of significantly lower standard than any other I had experienced on this trip. When all the toilet cubicles have urine-soaked floors and the showers smell no better than than the toilets, it is time to hold your breath, shower as quickly as possible and move on.The sun was blisteringly hot this morning. We have since been told that it was 31°C by 9am. I had half a hope that we would make it to Amsterdam today, but the temperature alone would have made that difficult enough. As it was, 4.8 miles out of camp, desperate for a cold drink, we headed towards the large multinational symbol of capitalism and obesity (the golden "M") where we knew we could get a large, draught coca cola. Just approaching the entrance, I heard this *LOUD* bang right behind me - like a car backfiring, but more piercing. With no motorised vehicles in the immediate vicinity, I could not quite figure out the source of the noise and was starting to examine the surroundings for a lone sniper, when John exclaimed that his rear wheel had exploded.
It took a second (with a glance to his tyre) to establish that he was not, in fact, joking. His tyre had been blown out of the rim. We found a nice shady bench outside McDonalds, where John's bike was, for the third time in the trip, turned upsidedown with the rear wheel removed. A useful passerby offered his assistance and said that he would be happy to cycle 1 km to the nearest bike shop to find out if it was open on Sundays. By the time he had returned, John had removed the inner tube to find that it had impressively exploded. The getleman passerby returned and informed us that the local bike shop was closed, as anticipated on a Sunday. Although John's tyre was slightly warped, a replacement inner tube looked as though it would solve the problem and at least get us as far as Amsterdam, where there would be bike shops galore. Here is the "Good news, bad news" part. The good news is that after eating through our two spare inner tubes, John had had the foresight to purchase a spare at a bicycle shop in Brielle. The bad news is that the inner tube he had bought had the wrong valve, so would not fit on the bike. We were then in the situation of being stranded, miles from the nearest campsite, with no town in the vicinity and the bleak prospect that perhaps all local bike shops would be closed on Sundays. This was an occasion to enable data roaming on John's phone. Being in the bicycle-friendly Netherlands, we found that there were a large number of bicycle shops nearby, but the frequency of seeing "closed on Sundays" started to get a little disheartening by the eigth or ninth shop on the Google-Maps list. We eventually found one that was open until 1:30 which was only a couple of miles away and leaving John with all my panniers, I set off to pick up an inner tube from the shop in Lieden. Riding an empty bicycle after 200 miles of being fully-laden was an amazing change. Gliding into Lieden, light as a feather, I found the bike shop with relative ease and the shop worker (who spoke perfect English, naturally) stated that he had once been riding behind his mother when her inner tube burst and he admitted that he too had thought a gun had been fired. I rode back to John, who yet again showed deft ability in replacing an inner tube (sucessfully). From there, we decided to head on to Amsterdam, admitting that we would probably end up needing to find a campsite around half way. Following red cycle-route signs for Amsterdam has been a far less problematic approach than our previous node attempts. But the unrelenting sun and completely unshaded roads made progress difficult. We found a supermarket to buy bread, cheese and fruit for lunch and found a nearby shaded park bench to sit and eat, out of the early afternoon sun. We set off again, feeling cooler and rested, but after a few miles I was gasping for another cold drink and the warm water in my bottles was just not cooling me down enough. A couple of towns came and went without a cafe/restaurant/shop in sight, so by the time we found a cafe, it was more than a little appreciated.OK, enough waffle from me... over to John...Not much to add that Penelope's account, save to say that the 'bang' really was tremendously loud. A passerby said that he thought that someone had fired a gun. When we showed him the tube, he said to take a picture, as 'no one will believe it', otherwise.
After that, we weren't really in the mood to do much cycling, but pressed on nonetheless. The heat was once again doing its best to fry our internal organs, and so after 25 miles or so (three more for Penelope, as she cycled to the bike shop and back), we found this very simple campsite, and settled in.
It took a while for the sun to sink low enough for us to lounge about in comfort, but eventually, Penelope got down to the task of writing the journal...
Today's ride: 25 miles (40 km)
Total: 246 miles (396 km)
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