August 1, 2015
Ossendrecht, Holland: Dawn patrol
THE TRICK to getting an early start is to know what you're up to. Master that and anything else in the day should be OK. Or so I thought.
This morning I left at six. The campground was at the end of a dusty, bumpy road that ran into a maize field, so I rode gently and then turned on the narrow road that led to the sea. I'd walked that way yesterday for a stroll along the beach in the last of the afternoon sun.
The peace and cool were blissful in a perfect dawn. I had the world to myself, unlike yesterday when the world was going to or from the beach and making a to-do about it. Lots of cars with yellow number plates fore and aft. Those annoying motorbikes that aren't quite motorbikes but sound like a hornet. They were all out yesterday.
This morning it was different and, even on the bike path above the beach, there was only the occasional angler, ciggie in mouth, dressed in camouflage and woollen hat. My plan was to get to Breskens, just north, and then take the ferry to Vlissingen, which earlier English generations called Flushing. From there, I could ride inland and north-eastwards along the Zeeland peninsula - after which New Zealand is named - and on to join the mainland in the province of Noord Brabant.
So far, so good. It was worth getting up at five.
So who would have thought there be no ferry at seven on a Saturday morning? This was one of the few ways out of Holland's detached half-province to the south and into the bulk of Holland across the water.
(Oh, and before you complain, I say "Holland" for the whole of the country because that's what the Dutch tourist office does, even though geographically it refers to only two of the western provinces.)
Who would have guessed there wouldn't be a ferry at eight, either? The modern ticket office at the top of concrete steps was closed. A handful of cars stood in the car park, their coating of droplets suggesting they'd been there all night. Every so often, a single-decker bus arrived in a pointless journey to drop off or pick up ferry passengers.
"The ferry does still exist?"I asked a rangey-looking man walking a dog on a long string. He looked at his watch as though it would answer back.
"Yes, it still runs," he confirmed. "Isn't there a timetable?"
I said there wasn't. Not on the glass door of the ticket office, anyway. A moment later I found one, as damp as the cars, tacked to a metal noticeboard. The first ferry would be at 8:30, it said. An hour and a half after I'd arrived.
So I caught that, you think. Well, no. The ticket office, now with an open door, had no one in it. I waited with another man while everyone paid at the machines around the wall. There were two of them. And they failed at the same time, just before we got to them.
My partner in misfortune used the intercom to call someone from the ferry. He arrived in a copy of a sea-going captain's uniform and sold a ticket first to the other man and then to me. It had taken a while to unlock the office, turn on the computer, open the cash drawer. And he gave me my ticket just as the ferry left.
"Another one in an hour," he said. "Sorry."
Somewhat pointlessly, I protested that I'd been there since seven, as though that was his fault. As though he was going to suck the ferry back to shore again.
So, what choice but to be zen? I turned and filled in the time by fitting yesterday's new brake blocks. I went further and made coffee on my camping stove, sitting at a concrete table. Another bus arrived, this time with passengers, and they looked expressionless as they passed.
All this explains how it was that I got up so early and achieved so little.
There is only one practical road east from Vlissingen, or two if you count the fast road closed to cyclists. And so my route was beside the smaller road, on bike paths, skirting Goes (you say Koose, near enough), with welcome excursions off through villages even the Dutch have never heard of.
I met two young and puzzled tourists at a crossroads. I asked in English where they were from and they said, in English, "England". He had a face as vertical and animated as hers was round and expressionless.
I asked where in England.
"Nowhere, really", the girl said. And he said: "From Reading, although originally from Reims, although I was young when I left and I don't speak French."
They'd set off from Hoek van Holland, where the ferry from eastern England arrives, and they were heading for Spain. Right at that moment they were heading for Vlissingen, but they were puzzled by arrows that pointed only down the motorway.
I pointed out the route to Goes and, since they could pronounce it but showed little inclination to go there, or to anywhere at all at that moment, I wished them well and left them.
I passed inland shipyards with hooters and rust and ringing bells but no sign of activity. I rode through villages of dreaded klinkers, the parquet-flooring of angled bricks that were smooth and scenic when they were laid but always went wrong within the year. And eventually I was off the peninsula, into Brabant and the hilly town of Ossendrecht.
The plan had been to go further. But ferries had seen to that.
Today's ride: 84 km (52 miles)
Total: 2,921 km (1,814 miles)
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I don't know if you read our page of our last journal reaching Ossendrecht, be we referenced the "hill" again.
Patrick is curious of where you stayed?
Rachel
5 months ago