Well we’re off again, this time without bikes, to revisit the scenes of some of our triumphs de Loreans. Both of us are a little shop-soiled at the moment. I can’t walk more than a mile without my calves starting to seize up, and cycling up any kind of hill is taxing. (Yes, there are hills in the Netherlands.) Elly may speak about her own issues – it’s not my place to do so, at least not here.

What Elly said: https://eleanor.scot/2022/08/25/2022-day-13-and-14-oslo-visit-day-15-cycle-to-ferry-10km-and-day-16-train-wrangling-to-amsterdam/

I’ll add photos later: this is just to show my follower I’m still here. Or at least that someone can post to my WordPress and Twitter accounts. How can you be sure it’s me doing so? Tot ziens!

What Elly said. Picture to be added later. I have been in so many hotel rooms and lifts in artificial twilight I hardly know where I am!

I know I’m on a DFDS boat that will take us to North Shields, arriving tomorrow morning. My issue is I have yet another cabin number to remember, another route to it to learn, and my brain cell refuses to hold onto any detail at this level of granularity. And why does it feel like twighlight at 16:21 in August? Mein Gehirnzelle is verrucht!

Day 17: arrival in Kiel, trains to Hamburg, Osnabrück and Amsterdam

• 1 mile of cycling: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220823-1023-14512
  • cumulative cycling: 222·3 miles

Day 18: Amsterdam to Zaandam

• cycling 7·8 miles: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220824-1149-40120
  • cumulative cycling: 230·1 miles

Day 19: around Zaandam

We decided to cycle to Geversduin, to see the location of the hobbit house we’ll stay in some day. (One of Elly’s birthday presents years ago was a stay there. However, plans were scuppered by COVID.)

• cycling 25·3 miles: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220825-1328-39807
  • cumulative cycling: 254·4 miles

Day 20: around Zaandam

No cycling – we travelled by bus. We spent our last full day in the Netherlands visiting a windmill museum! That might sound tratsch but it’s actually pretty and informative.

Day 21: Zaandam to IJMuiden to the North Sea

• cycling 17·5 miles: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220827-1207-60527
  • cumulative cycling: 271·9 miles

Day 22: North Sea to home

• North Shields to Newcastle 10 miles: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220828-0947-31615
  • Waverley to home 1 mile: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220828-1529-27003
  • cumulative cycling: 283 miles

• 6·2 downhill miles: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220822-1031-25957
• cumulative cycling: 221·3 miles

Our hostess left fairly early in the morning to go to her work. She’d shown us the route she recommended to get to the harbour, including the names of the important streets en route. So after a leisurely start, and locking up her house, we set off. I’d programmed a multiple-part journey into Google Maps using the street names we’d been told. Don’t try this at home, kids!

1. At the end of each journey-part, GM stops showing the onward route and asks if you want to continue route-following. This is no help if you are halfway down a steep street, going quite fast and just want a direction to follow, and really do not need to try to push a button on the jPhone bouncing in your handle-bars. Of fucking course you want to go on, otherwise you wouldn’t have set further ‘destinations.,
2. in subsequent stretches, GM keeps on changing the direction it is showing, as if it can’t decide whether you want to go on to the next ‘destination’, back to a previous one, or somewhere else entirely.
3. GM’s sense of distance changes quite rapidly as you approach turns, if it deigns to show them at all, leading to missing turns and longer journeys.

Really, what moron designed GM? Perhaps it’s the same tosser who thought hanging bikes vertically in trains is a good idea. Anyway, we eventually arrived at the ferry terminal, where we both cycled onto the boat, including going up a steep slope to the mezzanine deck. This was helped by slipstreaming from a couple of touring Harley-Davidsons in front of us. After that, there was nothing to do but sleep, eat, blog, sit and get lost on the way back from the smoking deck.

• 21 miles by T-bane, boat and Shanks’ pony: https://cyclemeter.com/3432aa395de1d505/Cycle-20220821-1208-00135

Our wonderful hostess took us into town and then to a triplet of museums on Bygdøy peninsula. Medical issues and the number of people wandering around in the dark, overheated atmosphere may have led to me finding the Fram museum somewhat oppressive, although going onto the boat without first knowing why it was famous first may have contributed. I’m sure the museum has done a thorough job of preservation and presentation of information in non-native languages, but what’s the point when you can’t see it to read it?

I also managed to cause concern by following Elly or her doppelgänger into the next hall via an underground passage (which is meant to be used by visitors), thinking it was the way to the next museum. It wasn’t, and Elly and our host are adamant that they never entered this passage, and that they had to search both toilets for me.

By contrast to Fram, the ship museum next door was light so we could see the exhibits, and get a feel for the harshness of life at sea on tiny, very well preserved boats. Most of them were used for fishing, but I don’t see where the catch would have been kept. There was hardly enough space for the sailors.

The top museum, by my reckoning, featured Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-tiki and Ra rafts. This hit me emotionally, as well as enabling us to get to close to the rafts I could begin to imagine life on boards: how much space and privacy there wasn’t. Then again, Kon-tiki and Ra were actually bigger than I’d imagined. I’m sorry if that doesn’t make sense to you but it does to me!

Here’s hoping the photos do some justice: