Monday 28 July 2014

Sun, sea and Biblical floods

All the best plans can go out of the window, especially when you going cycle touring with 2 children aged 3 and 15 months. This trip is no exception with this posting being written from a hotel room in Alkmaar after a fraught train journey to escape biblical flooding. 

It was good to get cycling from the campsite in Hook of Holland, after days of preparation, trial runs, packing and re-packing. It was actually quite a relief to discover that we could ride the bikes with  all the stuff we had brought with us.

The ride north up the coast from the Hook follows cycle paths through the sand dunes and immense greenhouses. Seb was soon asleep in the trailer and Emily was busily pointing out the sights from her bike seat. The weather was good and we were zooming along. We spent the night in a campsite in Katwijk having covered about 35km.

The kids are very excited about camping and love the various locations for bath time




We have brought a bike seat for the back of Tania's bike and a 2 berth trailer (Burley d'lite for those interested in such details) which Tom tows. We thought that it would be good to have options in swapping the kids around, and they tend to start unsuitable hitting competitions if they are both in the trailer. So far they both fight to go in the bike seat - the view is much better. 

The second day was similar cycling through the impressive sand dunes of the Dutch coast. They extend a fair distance inland and are quite hilly by Dutch standards, especially if you are towing a heavily laden trailer and carrying front and back panniers. You rarely see the sea but are always surrounded by sand. We camped the second night in a site just north of Zandvoort. 

Today we were woken by the sound of rain on the tent, which makes a change as we are usually woken by a squirming toddler. As we were packing up the rain got heavier, and by the time we were ready to go it was coming down in vertical sheets. We put both children in the trailer and cycled off. We were completely soaked within 5 minutes, and started to worry when we were cycling through a forest during a thunder and lightening storm. Amazingly both children fell asleep.

We reached the ferry over the North Sea Canal and decided enough was enough. We were wet, cold and the kids had woken up and were starting to register complaints. We headed to the centre of Beverwijk to look for a cafe or hotel, in fact anywhere we could get out of the wet. The only thing we could find was a cafe on the Main Street, but the owner was not interested in four wet cyclists as flood water was lapping at his door. To get to the station we had to cycle through flood water so deep that my front panniers were immersed. 

We didn't really care where a train took us as long as it took us away from where we were, so we picked Alkmaar. Getting two kids, bikes and heavily laden trailer onto a train is not easy, but a friendly guard was on hand, and the rain had eased by the time we got off. We couldn't face more cycling so we found a hotel, coffee and food and spent the rest of the day drying stuff.


1 comment:

  1. Sounds epic - big hugs from Beijing. We arrived safely on Tuesday morning but Lufthansa forgot to load Amina's guitar in Frankfurt. Luckily, they sent it on this morning's flight so all is well again. Keep cycling, don't let the weather put you off. xx

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