Day 6: Nijmegen to Roggel

April 1, 2018

We started off at 4 °C in the rain and saw conditions improve only in that the rain was on and off and the temperature climbed just above 7. It was really chilling and too bad, because we felt forced by the arrangement of stopping places to plan an 80 km ride today. That is 20 km more than we would prefer. And as it turned out we got lost enough to end up with 98 km. To say we are tired and frozen would be a real understatement.

I wanted to have a look at downtown Nijmegen without all the people, so we rode down the main shopping street for a bit. It was immediately obvious that I was wrong yesterday to surmise that the piles of bicycles were left by shoppers. That's because with the shoppers gone the bikes were still there. It seems obvious now that the bikes belong to people living above the shops. Those apartments must not provide garages.

The bikes are still here, so I surmise they belong to the opeople living above theshops.

Before long we were out in the countryside, very loosely following the Maas river south. The surroundings in this area feature many small towns, all with cute brick houses, and small farm holdings generally producing nursery stock, or with fruit trees or strawberries. Through the whole thing are small roads and an amazing web of cycle paths. Everything is neat and well ordered, and that is to an unbelievable extent. It seemed as if every shrub was pruned, every fruit tree cleverly espaliered, all grass cut, and no junk left lying around any house. The houses themselves are almost all made from brick, and though some have clever designs with bricks of different colour, most are a uniform reddish brown.

Ours is the Maas Route, but this is the first and last we saw of it.

This view of the green bike routes south of Nijmegen shows how we might contrive to get lost and cycle more kms than strictly necessary.

There were few cows in this region, and just a few sheep and little horses, like these.

Since this is Netherlands, here are two sample windmlls.

In one town, one road that we wanted to take did not have a parallel bike path. This really threw us for a loop. Unheard of! We diligently shifted over one road to the left and carried on, but we did not expect that lapse in this otherwise perfect place! By the way, it's not as if we fluidly or inventively did that shift. Rather a driver spotted us staring in disbelief at the "no bikes" sign, stopped his car, and guided us to the right spot.

Generally the small and perfect towns were quiet, and on this Easter Sunday even potential hot spots like the rare groceries and bakeries were closed. But as we entered little Oploo we came upon not only a cluster of cars but also announcements being made over a loud speaker. We had stumbled on the "Weilerronde van Oploo", a bicycle race of apparently some repute, also known as the "Golden Helmet". Competitors had come from all over Europe, and we were there to watch the women's component zip by, preceded by two motorcycles. Several men who were standing nearby watching came over and both gave us the background on the race and asked about our own tour. So we had an exciting sports event and a social happening with us and the three men. But soon we went on our way, and in 5 minutes all was orderly dead silence again.

With periods of intensified rain we began to chill even more. I was taking off a glove and shoving the frozen hand under my shirt, but a damp hand is hard to get back into a glove. When finally I was starting to shiver all over I hit on the idea of selecting a too low gear and then pedaling like mad. This did work to warm me up. Dodie just stoically carried on. She is a bit tougher than I in general.

When finally we reached Roggel we were happy to find no hassle about where to safely put the bikes, and that our room was on the ground floor. And it really was quite a room, with a large living area with several couches, and a full sized dining table.

There was also lots of room for the bikes in the corridor just outside,

We had been hoarding some now stale sandwiches, but decided we were frayed enough to need a hot meal. So we asked the hotel (De Beukelaer) hostess to reserve us a table at their restaurant. It would be full this night, because of Easter.

The menu was in Dutch only, but we managed to locate saté and also schnitzel, so these made up our first hot meals on this trip. They really hit the spot, affording us the strength, we hope, to now go and collapse.

Today's ride: 98 km (61 miles)
Total: 173 km (107 miles)

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