Facts and Figures: How Did We Do?

July 30, 2013

And so it is over. A Dutch of Class, one year in the making, took just over two weeks to come to fruition. Our time in Amsterdam - indeed, the entire holiday, was utterly fabulous, and we had the time of our lives. After finishing our epic journey north along the magnificent North Sea Cycle Route, Penelope and I settled into Vliegenbos campsite. They charged us 25 € (£21.58 / US$33.18) for the first night and then 85 € (£73.38 / US$112.82) for the remaining four nights, which was not actually that bad, considering that it's a (more or less) city centre campsite. Counting just our days in the saddle (cheating, maybe.. so sue us!), we did 266 miles (428.1 km), which is a more-than-respectable 29.56 miles (47.6 km) per day.

Our entire route is here, including the little 'glitch'...

The entire route (including our little jaunt to Africa!).
(*note that you can move this map around, and also change the view by clicking on 'map', 'satellite', 'hybrid' etc., at the top of the map*)

Our days were filled with food, drink and wandering aimlessly around Amsterdam. The first day after our arrival, Penelope preferred to leave the bikes at the campsite, trussed up like chickens to avoid sticky-fingered bastards getting their hands on them, but after that, we cycled into the city. As TC and I discovered in 2010, it is a fabulous place to cycle, and we estimate that Penelope and I did around 25 miles in and around. What a charming, enchanting little city!

On our last day in Amsterdam, I was having a 'lazy moment', and was snoozing on in the tent whilst Penelope was off having her shower. Eventually - and somewhat reluctantly! - I decided that it was time to get up, so pulled my shorts on and backed out of the tent. Ouch! Imagine my surprise (and dismay!) when I stood up and found myself rooted to the spot in utter agony! I had apparently pulled a muscle in my lower back when getting out of the tent, and at first, could barely stand without having pain shooting up my left side like someone was plugging me into the mains. Well, to cut a long story short, that day was spent sitting in my SlingLight chair, letting Penelope do all of the work. The next morning, the pain had subsided a little, but it still meant that when we ... sorry, when Penelope had packed up, we had to push the bikes to the city ferry, to get to Centraal Station. That day was not fun, struggling on and off of four trains from Amsterdam to Rosendaal, and then to Antwerpen, and then to Lille, and finally to Calais. At Antwerpen, the lovely SNCB lady kindly locked our bikes into the train compartment half an hour before we were due to leave, and was later nice enough not to fine us, when she found us sitting in a First Class carriage, when we only had a ticket for Second Class. That evening, after arriving in Calais, we walked two miles or so to The Cottage Hotel, and paid 68 € (£58.71 / US$90.26) for a decent - if spartan - double room on the ground floor. We had to leave the bikes padlocked up outside, against a railing, but the receptionist assured us that they were in plain view of their CCTV system, and that someone would be there all night. The WiFi was free, so we made the most of that, to check (and send) e-mail, surf a bit and do really important stuff like update our FaceBook friends as to how often we'd broken wind on this holiday. The next morning, as Penelope was inside paying, and I was doing my best to load the bikes outside, I got talking to a lovely Dutch lady and then to her and her husband when the latter came out of the hotel. They're from near Arnheim, and were heading into England for a few days to see what the weather was doing. They set off, and I was able to cycle very gingerly from the hotel to the ferry port, which saved us a good two hours. We managed to get onto an earlier ferry than planned, and we bumped into the Dutch couple again. I now have the QR code from my journal, on a printed card, hanging from the front of my handlebar bag, and they scanned it with a phone. We invited them to stay with us in SE London, even though I don't think that they will make it this far from the coast. We were on the Spirit of France, and got a great seat in the restaurant, right at the front behind those huge windows. I've never been very at ease inside a car ferry, ever since the awful Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, but it was nonetheless fun to sit and watch the compass on my iPhone changing direction as we neared England. Once off the ferry, we cycled to Dover Priory, and managed to get a train from there, straight to Charing Cross in London, whence another train took us home. And so, back to the drudge of daily life as a member of the working classes, we console ourselves with the sheer joy of eating up the miles on our fabulous bikes, and with the journeys to which we have (hopefully!) still to look forward. Looking back on what was Penelope's first real 'big' tour, there are examples of idiocy on both sides. Penelope forgot her Thermos mug. I forgot a spare pair of socks, and had to go without on more than one occasion, until I found three pairs for not too much dosh in Brielle. I also forgot my three pin - two pin adaptor, but a colleague overheard me mention this in the office on the day we left, and he had one which he very kindly lent me. As for kit for the future tours, we have both decided that we're getting a Thermarest each, as I suspect that it was ten nights on hard surfaces which pushed my back to breaking point. I also intend to get a pair of Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres onto the LHT. And Penelope's bungee cords broke near the journey home. One final purchase that I have promised myself is a new laptop. The little netbook with operating system installed on a USB stick did very well, but near the end, I wrote an 'epilogue' page much like this one (although a lot more depressing, according to Penelope), and due to disk corruption or whatever, I lost it. So a MacBook Air would be a welcome addition to my panniers, but that's some serious cash we're talking. I shall wait and see. Onwards, then. In a little over three weeks, TC joins us for the trip to the New Forest in Penelope, TC and John Headin' South, and we have already gone 'live' with London to Paris. We declare this journal complete. May God bless it and all who read it. John & Penelope.

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