We headed south to Leiden... Sure enough it was windy and flat. Once we got out of Amsterdam the road was straight, canal with trees to the right, fields to the left. Was pleasant enough, especially with separate cycle lanes, but the scenery did not change for what seemed a very long time...
Leiden is a gorgeous university town; canals, bridges, pretty buildings. We rode about for a while exploring the place and then headed slightly further south, with much more interesting cycling and camped on a farm. much to Byrdies excitement. she especially loved the pigs.
The next day we headed towards Gouda, in time for the cheese market. Was a lovely square with slightly touristy cheese market but surrounded by the local market. bought a lot of cheese, fruit and veges and bread...
Time to head back to Amsterdam. Unfortunately we didn't have a decent touring map . but that's ok we'll just follow the cycle route signs. At one stage Byrdie said let's follow the Lf2a signs going to Amsterdam. Unfortunately we almost did a full loop back before realising we were following the Amsterdam to Brussels signs... (was in Dutch, I now know that 'naar' means 'to' and 'van' means 'from'). When we realised we had done 45km from Gouda and yet covered only half the distance on the map of the 20km from earlier, we did some comfort eating. then followed the correct signs, back-tracking intially, until we eventually lost them again... one way or another, ended up being our most km in a day - 135km. Not exactly difficult cycling with it being so flat. literally the only hills are bridges! was great experiencing the Holland country side. seeing a whole row of bridge driveways over canals, lots of old windmills (not many actually going).
A bike fished from a canal; what happens to your bike if you don't lock it to something apparently.
No comments:
Post a Comment