Orange fields and frites – Lille to Amsterdam

Hallo from Holland!

Well I’ve finally made it to the ‘dam. Five days of solid cycling since leaving Paris, and now I can rest up and get stoned. I’d love to report that the wind settled down and things got easier, but unfortunately it didn’t! Thankfully the distances I needed to cover each day did get smaller, and by comparison to day one (140km) today was a relatively easy 72km.

Upon leaving Lille on Wednesday, I cycled onward towards Antwerpen, via Gent. As suggested by my first host David in Amiens, the riding did get exceptionally flat. I will hazard a guess and say that if I had not completely shattered myself physically during the first two days from Paris, I would have enjoyed the next three days much more, even with the wind. But as it stood, my legs were ruined and I could only manage a leisurely pace along the VERY FLAT countryside, and eventually an endless urban sprawl.

I did not expect it, but the flat area beyond Lille turned out to be almost one gigantic city, although realistically it was many towns which had grown so much in size, that they all linked into each other. So cycling between them was relatively easy, as you were able to follow excellent roads and cycle paths, which often ran alongside tram tracks or down tree-lined boulevards. And the roads are VERY straight, almost to the point of boredom. Amiens was founded by the Romans, and the Romans are renown for building straight roads, as opposed to weaving around hills or such. So I cycled through this endless urban sprawl, broken up with the occasional field or farm, and that pretty much sums up all of Belgium until I arrived just south of the border of The Netherlands… with the exception of Gent.

In hindsight, I would have loved to have spent some extra time in Gent, perhaps even stayed a night or two. It was a beautiful city, despite the fact that half of the Old Town was a construction zone as they were laying down new tram tracks. But down by the river it was exceptionally beautiful. I’ve been to other medieval cities, the most notable being Bruge, also in Belgium and not far away from Gent, nearer to the coast. Gent wins hands down as an awesome city. It had an amazing canal that looped around the old town, a great castle, and plenty of squares and open areas, full of cafes and bars. I saw none of that in Bruge, except the one main square and that was too busy for my liking. But alas I could not stay, as the wind was continuing to push me backwards, so I had to move on or I’d never make it to the next city.

As it was, I barely made it to Antwerp. The endless sprawl of residential, light industrial and farmland was wearing thin, and the wind shattered me. I made it to a Lidl supermarket to stock up on food and drink, only to find it closed so I had to cycle another hour on the little energy I had left. By 7pm it was clear that I was not going to make it to my hosts house in time – she was leaving to go to the Theatre at 7:45, so I had to beat the clock. But when I pulled up at the river at Antwerp, and found no way to cross it, I gave up, collapsed on a park bench in the sun, and slept for about ½ hour.

When I finally made a move, it turned out that my GPS hadn’t lied to me, by showing me a line across the river where there was no bridge… a few blocks back was the start of a road tunnel underneath the river. So I began cycling down the bus lane, and was no sooner in the tunnel that I had my first car beeping at me, and I realised that it probably wasn’t the best idea to be cycling 2km under the river in this tunnel. More cars beeped as they overtook me on the single lane tunnel, then one car stubbornly refused to overtake, and caused a backlog of traffic behind me for about 3 minutes whilst I cycled up out of the other side into Antwerp.

Well I told my host of the horrible experience, how I’d managed to piss off all the motorists in town, and she seemed quite surprised and bewildered that I’d actually cycled down that tunnel. “You know there’s a separate tunnel next to the car tunnel, just for bikes, don’t you?” Well I didn’t know that… turned out I’d been right next to it, but you had to catch an elevator down to the flat bicycle tunnel. Apparently it’s unheard of for somebody to cycle through the car tunnel, my host Leen seemed to think that I’d probably be on the news that night as the maniac cyclist that crossed in the wrong tunnel. Oops! But some better signs might have gone a long way, and she did agree that if you weren’t from the area, you wouldn’t have known about it necessarily.

Anyway, Leen took me out for a Belgium beer at her local bar which had a lovely beer garden out the front – I totally would have souvenired the beautiful Leffe glass, had I not had to cycle to Egypt with it in my bag! Then the next morning, I departed for Rotterdam. Not much happened on the cycle to Rotterdam. The wind dropped slightly, and I started to make a better pace, for the effort I was putting in on the pedals. I swung via Roozendaal, then another cute little town for lunch where there were some markets, and I grabbed the typical lunch fare around these parts – Frites, or a cone of chips with mayo. Beautiful, cheap and delicious!

Arriving at Rotterdam, I was again quite exhausted for the day but my wonderful host Marja prepared an awesome spaghetti bowl for dinner, and we sat outside in here lovely garden and ate. This morning when I woke up, I found that Marja had already left for work, and left me the keys to ock up the place when I was ready to leave. What a wonderful and trusting gesture! Typical of all the people I’ve experienced through the Warm Showers (cycling tourist hosting) website so far.

So further into the Netherlands I went, starting with a couple of short ferry crossings across the main river/canal of Rotterdam towards the mill district of Kinderjink. This is a very famous part of the city just to the east of Ridderkerk, Rotterdam. As we all know, The Netherlands are famous for their windmills, and in this mill park, there are around 20 of these huge Windmills right next to each other in a protected park that is also listed as a UNESCO world heritage area.

Basically, it turns out that as well as being flat, much of the Netherlands is below sea level, or reclaimed land. The first mills were build here in around 1750, for the purpose of draining the water from the lakes; in essence, the Windmills are just huge water pumps which harness the wind power in their sails, and move the water from one lower irrigation channel, to another channel on a higher level. The sails are huge, and if you stood in the way of one whilst it was moving, you’d get your head knocked clean off!

Well, they aren’t used anymore of course. In the 1950’s there were windmills closing down and being demolished all over Holland, as the local water board started utilising electronic pumping stations. This park was thankfully preserved for historic and tourism purposes.
I had planned on visiting the beach today at Den Haag, but Marja my host talked me out of it. “What would you want to go there for?” and I had to be honest, I was going to go for a swim, as it’s been around 9 months since I’ve had a good swim in the ocean. But the wind was still up, and it was cloudy and quite horrible, and not really worth visiting in the end, so I made a beeline direct for Amsterdam. What a great move, cycling through the countryside. It’s quite unique to see the way the Dutch people live. Nearly every house runs by a canal in their front yard, which you need to cross on a bridge to get to their front door. Every single road has a cycle path. Period. It’s amazing and something it took me a while getting used to. My GPS unit navigates by road, and I’m still in the habit of reading the roads ahead, not necessarily the cycle paths. But you need to use the cycle paths like a car uses highways – they have their own intersections, their own traffic lights and cars generally give you right-of-way when your paths cross. It’s fair dinkum amazing!

So the cycle into Amsterdam was pretty cool, apart from annoying kids who keep getting in my way on the cycle paths with complete disregard for the ‘cycle road rules’!

I can honestly say, that Amsterdam has blown me away, and I’ve not even explored the city yet. I’ve never seen so many bicycles, it’s absolutely insane. There are hundreds of thousands of the things, and it’s actually extremely hard to even find a place to park! None-the-less I’ve found a spare pole outside the police station, two doors down from my hostel (Bob’s Hostel). Since my plan to bunk down with a mate fell through, I’ve had to book in here at the last minute. I’m sitting here typing away in the bar, which is full of young travellers smoking their spliffs of marijuana. I’m getting stoned just sitting here in the smoky haze, sipping back Heinekens, it’s wonderful.

Who knows what the next few days hold? I’m a bit more relaxed now that my room is sorted (I went to three different hostels before I found one that actually had a vacancy!). Tomorrow the Dutch play Japan in the World Cup soccer, and Australia plays Ghana, so it should be a great day in Amsterdam! Seriously, if you could only see this place. The entire country is entirely decked out in orange coloured flags, banners, streamers, food … you name it, it’s orange! Totally unbelievable, the Dutch are soccer mad! I hope they win, it’ll be a good night in the ‘dam tomorrow if they do!

Righto, I’m off to check out the city. I’ll report back on my Amsterdam adventures in a few days.

Peace.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•