Photos online

We've finally found some wifi and posted our photos to Picasa (the link is also in the right sidebar). We'll try to update them every week or so...

Rolling on the river

We've been following rivers through Germany, mostly since there are well marked routes and it's pretty flat (it's especially nice to follow one downstream since that's also mostly downhill).

We were familiar with the parts of the Rhine near Düsseldorf and Köln, filled with barges laden with shipping containers. But the big industry soon melted away and there's been surprising variety in the landscape...

We passed through the German wine district with vineyards going up the steep river banks and medieval castles on every high point. We have found ourselves biking through forests and fields of asparagus, strawberries, wheat and potatoes (etc, etc). The Donau (aka Danube) river has practically no boats, probably due to the regular hydroelectric dams.

There's plenty of nature and wildlife, but every little German town (there's one every few kms) still has some industry or other. This town makes door locks, the next egg noodles, the next has a pulp and paper mill, etc, etc.

We'll continue following the Donau for a few more days in Germany, then through Austria to Vienna.

Easy does it…

We’ve been on the road for over a week and covered about 700 km.  This is at least twice as far as we’ve ever biked before. To ease ourselves into the rhythm, we’ve started along a fairly easy route. In Holland, we followed the familiar ‘knooppunten’ which led us clearly from point-to-point. 

In Germany, we spent the first few nights with friends and camped a few nights at well-equipped sites. 

We’re now following a guidebook called Reitsma’s Route that has detailed maps to guide us along bike-friendly roads. We’re mostly going along a marked bike route that follows the Rhine.

 

 

And we’ve got a GPS loaded with European bike maps in case we get lost.

There are even road-side stops with public bike tools

So, the navigation has been simple, the accommodations are comfortable and the terrain along the Rhine is very flat. So far, so good! We’re loving it and looking forward to a more challenging route ahead.

And we're off!

After several hours of packing and getting our apartment packed away, we finally left our house at noon!

So far our ride has been fairly flat and along set bike routes.

Yesterday we cycled with our friend Alex through the rain from Dinslaken to Duisburg (we started in Wesel), eventually giving up cold and soaking wet after about 50km. We spent the rest of the afternoon in a city museum with an exhibition on Mercator (the guy who figured out navigation), then decided to take the train to Alex's place in Dusseldorf for the night. After drying off, we'll be cycling back up to Essen, to stay with people that we met travelling on our last trip. Essen is about the same distance north as Duisburg so we'll essentially be covering the same distance that we skipped by train yesterday!

Its the Final Countdown...

The last few days have flown by. We had our last days at work, cleaned out our apartment, had goodbye parties with friends and colleagues, somehow finding time to finish building a kayak and going to triathlon practice. Yesterday, the whole country partied together for Koninginnedag and Marieke´s brother and his girlfriend have just arrived for a few days in Holland!
  

 (One of Marieke's colleagues made chocolate bicycles as a goodbye present!)

We´re pretty much ready to hit the road on Thursday, so next time we post we'll probably be somewhere in Germany. 

Last Trip Before the Trip

With only two and half weeks left to go before we leave, we took our touring bikes out for one last spin. This time, we headed west towards Den Haag to spend the weekend with our friends Adeline and Edgar. We kicked off the weekend with Ad and Ed's annual joint birthday party in the city centre. After a relaxed morning and a trip to the grocery store for some lunch supplies, the of us headed off fora day of cycling. It was a chilly day, but sunny and wonderful for cycling.
We rode north through forests, past enormous estates, through dunes and along the coast, stopping for a late lunch.

(no we didn't all plan to wear red!)
We continued along to Noordwijk, heading inland towards the famous tulips fields, which we were determined not to miss this year!

At some point one of us spotted "Aardbeien", so stopped to indulge in some heavenly early local strawberries.

As the sun started to set, we rode the last few kilometres back to our friends' place.

Tired, but rejuvenated by an amazing day of cycling, we sat down to very well-earned meal of Chinese take-away. A few of us (not mentioning any names), gobbled down numerous plates, attempting to satiate a cycler's appetite and simultaneously carb load for Rotterdam Marathon 10km race the following day.
The next morning, we work up early and joined the masses of people for the race. Despite having forgotten to register, we managed to get to the start line and run the entire race, including running through the finish line, without getting noticed. We even got participant medals, which we attempted to avoid but essentially got lassoed around our necks by eager and friendly volunteers! After a very cold trip back to Den Haag and hot showers, we headed back to Utrecht, tired but content after a very fun and active weekend!

Cleaning and Organising

No, it's not really the most exciting or glamourous of activities that one associates with planning a bike touring trip...But, with only three (!) weeks left to go before our trip, we figured that we should at least start getting our apartment ready for subletters. So, closets and cupboards got emptied, winter clothes got boxed away and the kitchen got a pretty good scrub. Since we're still here for three weeks, we'll need to do this again in our last week, but it was a good start!

Test Pack

This past weekend we set out with the goal of trying out our bikes fully loaded, including a night of camping. We set off from Utrecht around 5pm and rode west towards Amersfoort along bike paths, through countryside and forests, reaching a campsite two hours later just before dark.

We had called the campsite the day before to check to see if they were open. The man who answered the phone had been a bit abrupt and had said that there were a bunch of Brits staying at the site and that we might not want to stay there. I finally convinced the man that we didn't really care as long as there was room for a tent. Upon arriving at the site, we figured out what the man had meant - the campsite was full of British temporary workers and their families. We were given a tiny scrap of grass between all of the caravans and trailers on which to pitch a tent. We definitely attracted the attention of a few of the worker's kids who were curious about why we were sleeping in the tent and how it was that we got there by bicycle.

Despite the less than idyllic surroundings, our trial camping night with our new equipment went off without a hitch. The night felt a lot less cold than we thought it would be and our equipment setup seemed to work well.

The next day we set off around 10am, cycling 95km towards Zwolle into the wind and drizzle. It wasn't exactly the most pleasant of rides, but it definitely gave us good impression about riding fully loaded bikes! We finally arrived at our friends Eliska and Francois's apartment in Zwolle in the evening. We had a lot of fun that evening, chatting until the wee hours of the morning! Surprising after a long day of cycling! The next morning we woke up late, had a leisurely breakfast and took the train back to Utrecht. Overall a good test!