On Sunday we went for a short, meandering bike ride, ostensibly to pick blackberries between Haarlem and Sloterdijk. We were armed with containers for the blackberries, sandwiches and liquid – a couple of cans of beer and fruit juices.
Yes we picked blackberries, Yes there were plenty, but we were wearing sandals and that is not a very good thing when inside the blackberry bushes trying to reach the tastiest and biggest berries. Now neither Best Beloved nor I are very tall here in the Netherlands. Yes I know what you are thinking – that I am not very tall anywhere, but here it is also true that Best Beloved is not very tall either. The blackberry bushes are very tall and one needs to lean down to the lower bushes or try to reach higher than tall Netherlanders to collect berries.
Both options are fraught, in fact all options are fraught if you are wearing sandals.
Still we did gather a few, we (Best Beloved) was trapped in the blackberries, and had some difficulty extracting himself. I only got one large prickle in my big toe.
And we ran out of liquid on this blazing hot day – and there are very few public toilets out in the fields and I don’t have the picnic equipment that Best Beloved has – so we decided to ride to Sloterdijk – to use the toilet at the station and then replenish our liquid supplies. Which we did.
I just don’t know why we didn’t just go home at that point – we had already ridden 16 or 17 k’s on the bikes and collected blackberries.
No, me and my big mouth – I said why don’t we just ride into Amsterdam, you know, just for the fun of it. And so we did. It was a lovely ride, we have great pictures of great sculpture and delightful vistas, and at about 22 or so k’s nearly in the heart of Amsterdam, by Prinsengracht – we (I) decided we should turn back.
And you know the old story, the Johnstons are out riding, the wind says here they come – lets get them, and we rode back into the wind all the way home to Haarlem. It was truly exhausting and very slow riding.
So our little meandering journey became 42 + k’s just like that, and about 20K’s of it was riding into the face of the wind.
I need a zip on my mouth – so that our journeys are not extended too much when we are out there.
Tags: Amsterdam, Bike Rides, blackberries, daily living, Dutch, Prinsengracht, sandals, sculpture, weather, wind
Enjoyed your Blackberry rambles.
Hope John had a happy Birthday, I did.
Kath XX
[...] Story of the day we rode to Oosterpark var addthis_pub = ''; var addthis_language = 'en';var addthis_options = 'email, favorites, digg, delicious, myspace, google, facebook, reddit, live, more'; Sculpture Amsterdam, Oosterpark, Sloterdijk [...]