This is a multi-post coverage of our England to Denmark Trip on bicycles. The posts include:
You will find these links again at the bottom of the page.
Monday 04th - Hike-A-Bike
- Pietro left early from hostel, hungover vibes. Short but sweet, would've loved him to continue on w/ us.
- Morning off and half day riding.
- Feeling sore.
- Broke rack and seatpost. Jake not having a good day in that sense.
- Went the wrong way - did a hike-a-bike about an hour down a beach, only to end up on one side of a inlet. About fifty metres away was the shore on the other side, and was the Netherlands, but where we stood was Belgium. Had to back-track-reverse-hike-a-bike to the start of the beach, then cycle around a national park to cross the border. Surprisingly unproductive but nevertheless beautiful sections and good to be out there.
- Feeling relatively alive at this point.
- Enter Netherlands - Country #4, in 4 days. This trend about to end.
- Calzone
- Campsite - strong pitch. - Sore knee, right side.
We woke up feeling pretty much like a couple of line-caught turbot. Mourning the loss of Pietro and our hideous state of being we decided on having a 'half-rest day and setting off after lunch, but as you, the reader, surely knows by now, Jake knows no rest and couldn't help but clock a couple of rotations on an exercise bench.
The hostel owner was kind enough to lock our bicycles away and then to go off for lunch. He was very happy that we were there and thanked us many times. When we arrived we were his only customers, for what seemed like the entire season.
Back on the road and doin' it dirty! More culinary delights!
Bracket fungus on the left and shortly later I took the photo on the right to mark the place in which everything went wrong for Jake.
Jake's carbon fibre rear-rack that he made... broken. Damn epoxy wasn't strong enough.
The first of many photographs of Jake wearing his backpack. He no longer had a rack for this to be strapped to so instead he used his own barley rig to strap the bag to. I'd be seeing a lot of that backpack in the days to come.
Cheers!
After a good coupla hours pelting the promenades we arrived at a beach. The map said it was only a kilometer and a half to the border with The Netherlands!!! So we started pushing our bikes along the soft-sand. If you've never had to push a thirty kilogram bicycle over soft-sand for a kilometre and a half, in the afternoon sun, whilst wearing cycling shoes, you should try it.
Jake, with the North Sea behind him. Jake with the North Sea behind me.
This was the point that we realised that there was an inlet of water running along the border from Belgium to The Netherlands. Standing at about fifty metres wide and coming in from the sea about a kilometer, cutting the beach straight across. This channel was too wide to walk or wade across with our bicycles, but awesomely-not-quite-wide-enough to show up on Google Maps. We were flanked. This channel across our northerly path. The North Sea to our west and un-rideable sand dunes to our East. If we were going to make it to the next border crossing, it looked like another kilometre and a half of hike-a-bike back to the start of the beach front. Away from the border. Back towards England, and a cycle out and around the dunes through a national parkland. We ate a packet of Pim's orange choccie slices and accepted our fate. It was a nice place to be wasting away.
Got to give the engine the right type of fuel. Jake on the Belgian side of the border (left) with The Netherlands behind him and Jake on the Dutch side of the border (right) with Belgium behind him. An hour or two apart.
Wahoo, country number four. Sweet ridin' through the national park; victorious feeling after our multi-hour-beach-hiking delay.
Nothin' like a calzone and a coldzonie to send off the day.
Jayman posing with a 'perfect pitch'.
This is a multi-post coverage of our England to Denmark Trip on bicycles. The posts include:
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