September 5, 2022
Day 27: To Haarle
Unfortunately I was unable to remember any dreams about lottery numbers or any other way to make use of my new abilities, so it was on with another day on the bikes. I know you are all keen to hear if Kevin had pooped and the answer is that he had not, so we were keen to get on to a supermarket and find some kind of prunes.
Eleven kilometres of bicycle path cycling later and we were in the excellently named Vroomshoop. Dutch towns were harder for us to navigate than German towns due to not being able to cycle on the footpath and there not always being bike paths. Sure there is red paint on the road and a million other cyclists but it still made us nervous to cycle in the road with Kevin, so we stopped at the edge of town to take our break in a park and I left Dea and Kevin to cycle into town by myself, on the hunt for prunes. I must say without Kevin behind me the roads didn’t feel dangerous at all and I was soon at another Jumbo supermarket. This time I ignored the baby food section and searched all over the shop for prune juice or dried prunes. But nowhere I looked had any prunes, it was a nightmare. And then finally I checked the baby food section and found some prunes. Hallelujah! At last!
I had to do our grocery shopping too, although I did that in a nearby Lidl, I’m not stupid, then I raced back as fast as I could to get these prunes into poor little baby Kevin. As I reached the park preparing to do my returning hero act, I could see that Dea was busy in the middle of changing Kevin’s nappy. “I’ve never seen so much poo,” she said.
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Once again we saw many upside down Dutch flags today. I wondered if they were inadvertently flying another country’s flag so I looked it up, and the blue, white and red is in fact Yugoslavia’s flag, or at least it was for a decade or so in the nineties after they dropped the Soviet star. After I looked that up I couldn’t help feeling like I was cycling through Yugoslavia today, a strange feeling considering it’s a country that doesn’t even exist.
Dea also made a very good point about how it is kind of ironic to see the flags flying essentially in a protest that we must keep producing so much meat, alongside the very dry grass due to a very long drought in Europe (some people have told us there has been no rain for three months). Change is coming for sure, but will it be a change in our way of life we choose to make or will it be a change in the climate?
The drought has been very good for us though - the complete lack of rain has made travelling by bike with a baby much easier. Unfortunately for us there is an awful lot of rain coming soon in the forecast. Not today though, it was another scorcher and we were glad of our next break in the shade next to a river. It was by a bike path far from any roads and a lovely spot.
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1 year ago
I had spent a long time last night planning the route and it paid off with some more nice bike paths that took us next to sandy roads in the forest. It’s so nice when the road is awful and there is a paved bike path next to it!
But just as I was congratulating myself on what a good job I had done of navigating, we got to the last road towards our destination of Haarle and it was horribly busy and narrow. It was rush hour and no place for our baby. The only alternative was a sand road without a paved bike path next to it. We accepted the challenge!
I was pretty sure I saw Dea take a photo of the sandy road but apparently not, so I don’t have any photos to show you, but I’m sure you can imagine me on my bike towing Kevin on a sandy road. It went surprisingly well! And soon we were in Haarle. Our hosts are a nice couple who have just joined “welcome to my garden” and we are their first guests. It’s been a nice evening and now I am tired so I will say goodnight.
Today's ride: 35 km (22 miles)
Total: 901 km (560 miles)
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1 year ago