May 20, 2025
Of looking and lollygagging
MY PROPOSAL is that I should have a Nobel Prize. Not for any scientific advance but for inventive and undemanding use of time. I see myself called to Stockholm to look appropriately modest as I am led closer to the stage. “And ze new Nobel Prize for lollygagging,” a man with a heavy accent will say, “goes to [dramatic pause]... Léo Vootland.”
I won’t care about the mispronunciation. I doubt I’d notice. I’d have started a conversation with someone interesting.
This tour, because it’s supposed to be that way, is becoming just that. Not the Nobel Prize, I mean, but world-level contributions to peace and lollygagging. We have ridden all day for what Tour de France riders achieve in half an hour. But, then, how often do you see Tour de France riders wondering which side of the road has the better coffee?
It was while we were gazing and waiting to cross a river that we met two dozen Canadians in matching T-shirts. They descended on us on hired bikes and said they came from Tirana. That struck me as odd because Tirana is the capital of Albania. Then I realised they were trying to say Toronto.
The name of their tour company was printed across their chest and they listened politely as their guide explained whatever needed explaining. They nodded politely, lost interest and came back down to the canal to see if the opening bridge had closed for them to cross.
They were there again when we visited Fort Sabina, a giant place which nobody had thought to open for us. But they’d left a cannon out on the grass to show how they’d have shot anyone coming up the water without an invitation.
It was a waterway just beyond that fascinated us. The midlands of Europe are crossed by canals and long, wide rivers. The Danube is second only to the Volga. Some rivers are better known. Some, like the Danube, have music in their honour. Nobody, however, has written a poem about the Waal but it is nevertheless capable of taking ocean-going ships from Germany out to the North Sea. We stopped to admire them, great, silently-moving beasts carrying who knows how many truckloads that would otherwise be on the roads.
They moved down towards us and, three at a time and never touching, they slipped into an industrial-sized lock. For all that the countryside looked flat, they had to be lowered to the next stage of their journey to the sea and countries who knows where.
Be thankful for these ships and for their smaller partners, the freight trains. Every tonne they carry is a tonne that doesn’t hurl past our ears on the road.
Tonight we are way out in the flatlands, at Noordschans. I’ll tell you tomorrow about the campsite’s beginnings and the remarkable young woman who runs it.
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