September 4, 2022
Day 26: To a campsite near Marienberg
Following on from yesterday’s theme, during this morning’s ride on quiet Dutch country roads we saw many random animals that reminded us of travelling in far flung corners of the globe. We saw wallabies like we had seen in Australia, donkeys like in Uzbekistan, buffalo like in the United States, and alpacas like in Peru. That was four continents right there. Actually five because we also saw sheep like in Wales. We also saw goats like they have in Africa, but we never cycled in Africa so it doesn’t count.
We hoped to go shopping in De Krim but the shops were closed on Sunday mornings. We only wanted to buy Kevin some prune baby food or prune juice because he hadn’t filled his nappy in a while and we thought that was maybe what was making him fussy. Prunes were apparently the way to get things moving again, but there were no prunes to be had in De Krim this morning. Instead we took a two hour break on a not very nice grass verge.
Two things to note here. After about an hour and a 45 minutes I noticed on the map that there was actually a nice looking park just around the corner. The other was when Dea asked what happened to the eggs I had bought yesterday, just as I was about to sit down on my clothes pannier. I used this pannier for sitting on (including at last nights dinner and this mornings breakfast) because it is nice and soft. And I realized as Dea asked me this question, the softness of it was also why I had thought it a good idea to wrap the eggs in a T-shirt and keep them safe amongst my clothes in this pannier.
I was naturally fearful as I opened up the pannier at what I might find inside, but the very interesting thing was that last night I had had a dream in which I had opened up an egg box to find all of the eggs cracked open and destroyed except for three surviving eggs. This may have been a dream based on the fact that different parts of my brain remembered putting the eggs in my clothes pannier and then sitting on the same clothes pannier later in the day. Whatever it was, it was a very vivid dream and now as I unwrapped the egg box from a sticky eggy T-shirt and opened the box I was astonished to find amongst the carnage three surviving whole eggs. My dream had precisely come true. I had in my sleep seen the future. This was staggering, the implications, my goodness!
During the day we saw an awful lot of Dutch flags being flown upside down. This is a part of the Dutch farmer protests that have been going on for the past couple of years, because of the government plan to halve the number of livestock in the country in order to try and limit the negative environmental impacts. It’s a complicated issue that so far as I can tell has driven Dutch farmers to turn their hands to rearing wallabies and alpacas. But there were so very many flags being flown upside down. It’s a protest that I don’t think would go down well in Denmark where it would be really bad to disrespect the national flag like that, plus it would basically look the same upside down anyway.
Our next break was supposed to be on a beach beside a lake, but it turned out to be private, so it had to be on a bench by the road instead. We were only two kilometres from an Aldi on the edge of Hardenberg so I took off on my bike hunting for prunes. Unfortunately the Aldi didn’t have any baby food products at all, so I decided to carry on into Hardenberg centre to find a Lidl. Unfortunately Lidl didn’t have any baby food products either, so I walked further through the town to a Jumbo supermarket. I knew they had lots of baby food products as I had been to a Jumbo yesterday. But unbelievably they didn’t have any baby food products with prunes in. I had taken absolutely ages and couldn’t go back empty handed, so I found some pear juice for babies and hoped that would be good enough.
By the time I made it back Kevin was very sleepy and it was time for us to continue our journey. Our third and final section of the day was by far the best, leaving behind the long straight roads and taking a really fun bike path that wound through the forest away from all traffic and the outside world. It was a magical bit of cycling.
We came out of the forest at a little campsite. Like the one we stayed at before it is “mini-camping” which seems to basically be a little campsite on someone’s land with no frills and certainly no holiday homes, just a few spaces for tents or caravans. And this one was perfect - very quiet with just a couple of other guests who came over to say hello, some even offered to lend us chairs. Which was good, because it kept me off my clothes pannier.
We enjoy our evenings at campsites very much, and Kevin was in a happy mood again, even though I’m sorry to report that the pear juice hasn’t worked yet
Today's ride: 29 km (18 miles)
Total: 866 km (538 miles)
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