We arrived in Otterstadt after a challenging 53k ride assisted by some helpful locals and some helpful but not useful locals. We have discovered that people give instructions based on their driving knowledge, which means that you travel in circles only to discover that you were already on the right road.

And it was too darn hot.

about 28 Celsius today and it appears that it will be hotter still on Sunday and Monday.

Otterstadt has a fantasy otter fountain of course – and the otters are quite delightfully playful. I will add photos. Right now I am so tired I am going to bed.

Oh, and that Best Beloved, who would never step into a building with golden arches – had an espresso and chocolate cake at McCafe. Believe it or not.

He didn’t actually step into the building – he sent moi in to gather food and drink.

Well now that we are on the way and have a 51k bike ride under our feet we know we can do this funky thing.

Yesterday we rode from Zevenaar in the Netherlands to Xanten in Germany and the total ride was 51.12 or something very close to that. It was just over 51 k’s and we were too tired to remember the little extra there was. So for all the sceptics out there – we two will do this. OKAY!!!!

The ride included a long bridge over the Rhine – where we thought that just maybe we would be thrown from our side across the motor traffic section to the bike lane on the other side and clean off into the water as the wind blew soooo strongly. We had to walk the mid section and we rode off down the other side and the wind was blowing so hard towards us there that we didn’t even pick up any great speed which as it happens is fortunate because we had to stop to check the route very soon after we got off the bridge – had we been riding really fast we may not have been able to stop in time.

We stopped for several hours in Grieth, where we had lunch looking over the Rhine and marvelling at the huge barges, ships, a little yacht and a speed boat etc that were travelling by. We also watched a ferry boat moving continuously from one side to the other through rough and fast moving water and around the other traffic, spinning it seems in sections where the wake of a boat or two and the run of the water caused dramatic variation in the trip across the river.

I have spoken often of the wind in the Netherlands – how whenever the Johnstons are out and about the wind shifts its direction so that it hampers our ride as much as possible. It is much the same here in Germany so far.

The wind was very strong and gusty yesterday – either directly in our faces or very hard across from the right which meant if it tossed us it would toss us into the traffic.

I think I mentioned that we were tired. We did manage a bit of a walk about and found an Italian restaurant were we ate and enjoyed a little chianti and then we slept. It seems we were very tired.

We were in bed before 9pm and woke around 5.45am – Yep we were tired.

Its all that wind that makes one tired!

We are staying here 2 nights so we can explore this old Roman town. We are also staying here 2 nights so we can do our washing. So guess what – Monday the laundromat is closed.

Just as it would be in the Netherlands!!!!!!!

And we are in Germany at least 44k’s from the border and 51k from Zevenaar in the Netherlands.

These 2 oldies (did I really say that?); we are preparing for a bike ride of some 850 or 900 k’s depending on where you check. Sadly we are not training as much as we should, but we are getting together the bits and pieces that might just make the trip manageable and we are now the proud owners of Lycra.

We both have nicely padded bike shorts so that our tender parts remain intact after spending many hours on bike seats. I want you to know though,  just in case you were worried about it. We will be wearing lycra covering things. We do not intend to inflict the sight of us  in Lycra on the eyes of the world. It might cause mass hysteria or some such. I don’t want to explore what harm we may cause.

We also have mirrors on our bikes, fingerless leather backed bike riding gloves (to manage the grip as your hands become sweaty), decent panniers, and bike helmets. We look almost “cool”

or should that be “hot hot hot”  because we will be wearing lycra and feeling very very hot under the August sun.

So if you see a news item somewhere in the month of August of two people in Lycra visiting many bars and cafes on the route from Haarlem in the Netherlands through a bit of Germany and some sections of France, all relatively close to the Rhine it just could be us. Now it will be us if the persons described are as follows – two older people, one with grey hair and the other bald with whiskers speaking with an unusual accent for these parts, so maybe they could be from New Zealand – Yes I think that would be us. If they are described as last seen entering a bar or cafe, sweating profusely and gasping for cool clear liquid, Yep that would definitely be us.

Take note of that news item cause if we do not arrive at our destination in Untersiggenthal in Switzerland you may be the only person who knows exactly where we have been and then the search for two oldies in Lycra can begin.

In short – no we are not

A beer was needed to cope with the ride through cobbled streets in Bloemendahl

We are not in good shape for our ride – but we are working on it.

And we will have time to do it, the trip I mean, after all Best Beloved will have retired – (forced to retire, unheard of in New Zealand), so we have nowhere to be at any specific time in the month of August or indeed September, other than having promised grandson we will be home in New Zealand mid to end of September.

There are 31 days in August and we plan to leave here on Friday the 5th. Why Friday the 5th? Well it is rubbish day, so everything not on its way to New Zealand already, and not suitable for recycling at de Schalm, will be in the rubbish bag and out for Friday morning early and then we will leave. We will not ride far on that day as I think we will be quite tired – so somewhere handy in the Netherlands that we have not yet visited – and then we might have a rest day Saturday.

We do plan on an average of 50k’s a day with a stop every 3 or 4 days so we can see actually see interesting places on the way. Now of course we can change tack at any time.

Why do I say that? Well I do have asthma and wind gets me badly – so if it is too windy we don’t want to be too far from a rest place or a train option. That is part of our planning to follow a picturesque route, but never so far from a rest or train option that we have problems if my breathing goes to the pot. My asthma is not extreme, just a bit annoying at times.

We haven’t fully worked out the route, so worse case scenario is that we will need to ride 950k’s and if we did that without rest days then we would need to average 36.53846 k’s a day. If we can ride 50k’s a day then the riding will take 19 days and that means we have 7 days up our sleeves as rest days which could mean we have 2.7142 days of riding before we have a rest day. Now that isn’t so bad – 3 days riding and a rest day. We can do that.

We also have a really great backup plan!

Son lives in Switzerland – so if we are too far from the train and too far from a bed – we will simply phone him as long as our mobiles are charged and say “come and save your parents”. And he might just do that for us.

Ready to go to the Beach at Parnassia

Now our training program is already to pot – We don’t ride our bikes in the wet, cold and drizzly weather as we don’t wish to risk a fall and bones breaking right now.

Our training program is defined in this book Cycle for Life Bike Basics + Body Basics + Challenge yourself, by Nicole Cooke – Olympic Gold Medallist Beijing 2008.

And NO it is not about cycling in the Olympics – it is about being the best and the fittest cyclist you can be from food, clothing, trip planning and then there is that word “FITNESS” planning.

Sadly the 3 x 8 week training programs we hoped to complete are now not possible. Why is that? We have only 22.4285 weeks left so cannot complete 24 weeks of the recommended training programs. So it is good there are trains, sons, rest days, and time up our sleeve.

And it will be an adventure however we get to Switzerland in August 2011.

Last winter Best Beloved waited by the door to take photos of me as I returned after being caught in a snow storm. This year I returned the favour.

Best Beloved was out purchasing serious supplies – (I think wine), and returned in rather snowy conditions.

The photo was taken on 4th December.

4th Dec - surprise snow

The effect of this unseasonal and early snow was to halt train travel in many parts of the Netherlands.

On Sunday 5th December we travelled by train into Amsterdam to see Cirque de Soleil “Totem” – the trip took nearly 3 times the time anticipated and included being stuck on a train 250 metres from Amsterdam Station. We did get to the show but rather late.

There you go – we have succumbed to the lure of the car.

Tis out now – we have driven ourselves by car – not public transport and bicycles in the UK

We arrived home Sunday night, 10th October rather late, after a 10 day journey from Haarlem by train, via Ghent in Belgium, on to Calais in France, to catch the P&O ferry to Dover and then believe it or not by car via many places to London and by plane back again to the Netherlands.

What can I tell you about this wee trip. Well, it was expensive, the food and the accommodation was excellent everywhere, and we saw Henry IV, part 1 at the reconstructed Globe in London. And we drove down country lanes that in New Zealand we would not consider driving.

You know all those wonderful crime series on TV, nice, genteel ones like Midsomer Murders and Inspector Morse where they drive on very narrow country roads at great speed. You simply cannot ever do that, the roads are so narrow, the hedgerows so high and in need trimming that so many signposts are hidden in the bushes. You cannot ever see a car coming towards you. On those wonderful shows they must organise it absolutely so that no cars, trucks, bicycles, tractors, farm machinery, horses, pedestrians, cows, etc can possibly be driving, riding or walking towards one.

Those roads are as they look on TV – but they cannot ever be driven at more than 10 miles per hour.

And then you have to consider the weather on a trip to the UK in October, or even at any time if the weather information that is absorbed over a lifetime is sort of accurate. The weather was beautiful all the way to Dover, and to that car, that all important car and then it started to rain. It rained all the way to Salisbury, the wind blew like crazy when on the beach at Bognor Regis, and then we bought umbrellas and the rain stopped. Not another drop for the remaining 8 days.

We did a great deal of exploring, visited cathedrals, saw the White Cliffs of Dover in sunshine, ate at little pubs, slept at B&B’s, Stonehenge, Bradninch – birthplace of Best Beloveds Grandad, and generally had a ball – there are some good stories to be told and I will – later.

Oh dear, such heart in mouth stuff, in London we saw cyclists (definitely not something that I could do, in London I mean). If Princess Beatrice can be in a car crash with her huge Beemer mushed between bus and coach on Hyde Park Corner roundabout, then consider the cyclist in that spot. I just couldn’t do it.

And we both had haircuts in Chinatown – Now is that brave or what?

And we nearly understood the English as she is spoke – by people everywhere there, and we did nearly understand it all – thank goodness for English TV shows in New Zealand, otherwise it could have been double Dutch to us. And nearly all those speaking English thought we were Australian. HHHmmm!!!! Nearly.

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.

Not ice skaters – too warm for ice now, but roller skaters, roller bladers, inline skaters – I think those are all terms to cover the fast moving people we met on Nassaulaan this evening.

We were minding our own business. We had been for a quiet walk around town for about an hour, across to the Spaarne and back across the Grote Markt and home down Nassaulaan. Suddenly we saw coming towards us a traffic officer with flashing lights, and we scurried across the road at the bridge over Niewe Gracht – because we thought he was going to be going somewhere in a very big hurry. Easy assumption because when the flashing lights go on they usually are hell bent on getting somewhere pretty quickly.

Not this one, he seemed to be coasting along with his lights flashing and we did not have to scurry at all. We stopped to see what he was up to – rubber neckers – that is us. We watched, and suddenly there were people with whistles and orange vests and skates of some kind or other. Well what would you think, were they on some sort of exercise – learning about crowd control or something. One stopped at Niewe Gracht on each side of the intersection of the bridge and others went past us and stopped at the other side of the bridge – one at each side of the intersection on that side. And then they came – Hundreds of people, all shapes and sizes, in all sorts of gear, normal clothes, sports clothes, clowns clothes (they were gorgeous), orange vests, whistles and wheels – skates, inline skates, roller skates, and roller blades – and they just kept on coming.

All ages, all sizes, all shapes, some crash helmets and knee pads, and elbow pads, and shorts, and skirts and skates – at great speed – like lemmings – they flowed by us while we stood on the bridge and watched open mouthed.

Hundreds more it seems – suddenly we jumped into action – camera – oh s…………. no camera, camera phone, maybe but it was a bit dimm – the light, I mean. Best Beloved took some photos with his phone and he will upload them tomorrow if he can and I shall post them if any are okay.

From what we could tell -there is be an event – and I don’t know, maybe this was a warmup. When we see the paper tomorrow, maybe we will know more. Best Beloved is managing reading the local papers quite well now – so if it is there we will report back.

Eventually all the skating people had gone by – and the orange vested, whistle blower skaters fell in behind – and they continued away up Nassaulaan – at great speed.

It is amazing what you meet in Haarlem in the evening when out on a quiet walk on a beautiful evening.

There was a young man – just a little way along the bridge – and he said “That was cool, that was so cool” – I agree, yes it was cool.

It was last Sunday. We were well rested, and the effects of this spring seemed to have lessened a bit for us both.

It was nearly a great day – this Bison hunting day.

We left home reasonably early, and as we always do we took clothes for the rain, and clothes for the wind. We had to stop about 1k from home to add clothes to protect from the wind.

Now Morgan has given us both a special Swiss bag for carrying across the body over one shoulder and it has pockets for everything. It is a great thing for hiking as they do in Switzerland and for cycling as we do here in the Netherlands.

Mine contained my little Samsung camera to take those all important Bison photos, my puffer for my asthma, my strepsils for my sore throat, and my sun tan lotion for the sun, tissues for you know what, and did I say it already; probably, but I also took my little Samsung camera to take the all important Bison photos.

I know you are saying out there – what am I on about.

Well, I added a sleeveless sweater vest thing to stop the wind. I took off the wonderful Swiss bag, the gift from Morgan, put on my Vest thing, and reduced the affect of the wind. I rode off happily without my Swiss bag, my camera, my puffer, my suntan lotion, my strepsils, my tissues, and oh dear, my camera.

We rode for nearly 5k’s before we realised. That is we rode to our destination – the Bison Park, well it isn’t called the Bison Park, but just now I cannot remember what it is called. But we rode there all the same, stopped the bikes, started to lock them up and I realised I didn’t have the bag, the wonderful Swiss bag from Morgan.

and that Best Beloved rode gallantly back to see if he could find the bag – not a hope.

But the best thing that happened on this day is that there were no Bison to be seen anywhere. So the camera wasn’t needed.

But I would like 4gb memory card back

So if you found the bag – you can have it, I just want the photos I have not downloaded from our boat day the day before.

So if you have the bag and camera and all the other bits and pieces in it – we can swap – I will give you the charger for the camera battery and you will give me the 4gb card with the photos on it still.

Message for Morgan don’t buy us another bag. We can replace it ourselves, as well as the camera. I just hope we get the memory card back.

I was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday so Best Beloved took a bike ride out towards Parnassia alone – looking for the entry to the Downs where there is a walk to “MAYBE” see the bison in the park. He did find the entry after riding past it and back again, and then he did walk into the park a bit to check it out for us.

BUT

it was raining so much that he gave up and came home. That is okay because when we next go to check out the Bison on a good fine day, we will know exactly where to go.

But

the reason for the title of this wee rave – is that Best Beloved rode across a main road – on the green light for the bikes; as you should, and as you do, and a young woman with flowing flaxen hair rode by him. It started to rain and she continued to ride and nonchalently took our her umbrella, unfurled it and continued to ride on in the rain with the umbrella protecting her.

Now Best Beloved has a widget – and this flaxen haired young woman rode by at over 21k’s per hour.

He came home feeling tired, less fit than he had when he left, and just a bit wet.