Day 109: Wijdenes - to Edam and then Ursem: Up with the cows - Grampies on the Go - Again! Summer 2012

September 5, 2012

Day 109: Wijdenes - to Edam and then Ursem: Up with the cows

Actually, getting up with the cows was easy, since they seem to have slept in to about 6:30. Now at 7:30 they are finished milking and are off for a day in the pastures. We, however, are having a slow start, enjoyng the extreme luxury of a picnic table!

...and are heading out for a day in the pastures

It was a short cycle along the dike and into the town of Hoorn. Hoorn had been a port on the Zuiderzee, but now of course is on the freshwater Markermeer.

Hoorn used to be a centre of the Dutch East India company. It has a large number of 400 year old buildings, left over from the lives of merchants and traders. And like in other towns here, they lean satisfyingly this way and that.

At the centre of town is a statue of Jan Coen, the founder of the company, and founder of the city of Jakarta, around 1600. Apparently the statue is controversial, because Coen was not a nice man, leading punitive raids on natives who traded with the British.

Not only was Hoorn really picturesque, but we found there another canister of cooking gas. That means hot food, possibly until we reach England (where we will just sit in the pub all the time!)

Back out along the Westerdijk, we reached a memorial of a storm that happened in 1675. The water broke the dike and flooded what looked like a huge area on the map at the site.

Soon we encountered a sign for a pancake house, or pannenkoekhuis. These are everywhere, and of course Dutch pancakes are famous, especially in the USA. So just for research purposes, in we went. The Dutch pancake, like the French crepe or even the pizza, is a matter of the base and the toppings. I chose apple and bacon and Dodie chose one they called a Stinkerd – onions, salami, camembert, and garlic chives. The toppings were ok, but we both found that the pancake probably had oil in the batter and had been fried with oil on the griddle, making for an altogether too oily product. Now we don’t know if that was isolated to the pancake house we hit, or if it is the general practice. Like with the “curry wurst” we may not be willing to invest another mealtime in finding out. Oh, one other thing, with a coffee and an orange juice the cost was 28 euros, which is about $36 canadian – a pretty pricey lunch by standards of back home!

We continued along the dike, all the way to Edam. Edam turned out to be quite a small town, and approaching it was a pleasant matter of riding down a cobbled road beside a canal, with no intimidating traffic. At the centre of town, a modest intersection of quite narrow streets, stands the first shop selling souvenirs that we have encountered in Netherlands. They had wooden shoes, little windmills, and some blue and white dishes. We could buy and take along none of this, of course, but I did get a sticker with a cow on it and saying “Edam”!

One more intersection down was the Edam cheese market, the main thing that had drawn us down there. I guess I was expecting a big building, like the Atwater market in Montreal, bustling with eager Amsterdam based buyers. What we found were a few wooden tables, since the market was over when we got there, that would have supported just a half dozen vendors. One permanent store on the corner did have a selection of “Edam” cheeses, but like the cute and small town, it was a cute and small presentation. We are sure, though, that we did find the true Edam and the true market, because back at the one souvenir store we could see it all on the postcards for sale.

We now began to grind our way back north, as we worked to position ourselves to cross the northern dike. Going up more or less the centre of the North Holland peninsula, we found farm after farm, much like in Gelderland. Surprisingly, we noticed that sheep much outnumbered cows. We are not sure what the sheep are mainly kept for. Certainly we have not seen any lamb in the local diet, nor sheep’s milk cheese. So it must be wool. Yet woollens have not popped out at us either. When we get back to a real internet hotspot, I am sure Wikipedia will clear up the mystery in a jiffy. Still the fact remains – Holland is full of …sheep.

We were happy enough, just cycling through farmland and counting the sheep, until it began to be time to look for camping. We headed for a camping that was indicated on the large node map, but when we got there … nothing. So there we were again, wandering in headwinds on an endless grid of farms, using our last calories in an aimless search for a place to stop. Unlike in other lands, every inch of Holland is allocated to houses and farms, so wild camping did not seem an option.

We downed the last of our cherry tomatoes and some cookies, and headed for a town – Avenhorn. There we found nothing, but – a sign pointing to camping 4 km away, in Ursem. In Ursem we found the camping, which seemed to be part of a large public property including a lake, a large central building, and a seemingly huge area in which people were set up for the season, or forever, with trailers.

At the central building, all was shut tight, and signs in the door were Dutch to us. We circled around and eventually found a sanitary block. We found a spot around a corner from that, and pitched.

So we have water, and power if needed, but not internet. This text is being brought to you by those last dregs of T-Mobile credit. I think I will go beserk and include one shot of Hoorn, but as for the other 30 shots, and the more expanded story that comes in the captions, they will have to wait on internet.

With a hot meal (yes, heated up packaged sate and rice from Aldi) and no photos to fool with uploading, it can be an early and comfortable bedtime, all the better for our northward trek tomorrow.

The buildings of "our" farm are in the tree and "our" cows are in the field to the left.

The weathered plaque shows the extent of flooding

... and also the long distance routes a bit

This sign has it all - nodes, LF routes, and basic pointing signs

45kph speed limit would probably have it banned in North America

Dodie noticed a Hebrew inscription on this statue. We turned around to find a very old Jewish cemetery.

The cemetery had this memorial for people lost in concentration camp

Clients or workers are parked in front of this accountant's office in edam

Not much traffic on this main street into edam

In "downtown" souvenir wooden shoes for sale

Building detail beside the cheese market

Buildings near the cheese market at Edam

To buy a house in Edam could take 499,000 euros

These is a lot of Beemster areas- north, south, and others. They are celebrating a 400 year anniversary, and the whole are is decorated with these four colours.

Beemster claims credit for the layout of Manhattan. Read about it at:http://www.beemster.us/en-us/our-heritage/indepth-stories/beemster---manhattan/

Decorated houses as part of the 400 year celebration

Sheep pretending to be spotted cows, since the cows are so outnumbered

Near our chosen camping spot - everyone is gone, probably for the season

Today's ride: 66 km (41 miles)
Total: 5,655 km (3,512 miles)

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