Biking back to Amsterdam

With a long day ahead and no sign of the temperatures getting any cooler, we rolled out onto the trail as the sun was still coming up.



An hour or so later we enjoyed a lovely breakfast in Spakenburg, on a bench by the old boats.

Great excitement came later on, when we discovered that we needed to get a ferry across a small river. It was the bargain price of one euro and was about to leave as we arrived. No time was wasted and it pulled away from the river bank seconds after we'd come aboard.





Then came a forested section which felt really different to everything that we'd seen so far. It also provided some welcome shelter from the strong headwind that we had been up against all morning!



This took us to an old fortress at Naarden, which was guarded by many moats, which when viewed from above (or in our case, the map), made a pretty almost symmetrical pattern.



We had lunch here in the form of cheese and cucumber rolls, eaten under a tree, by the water's edge. A little lie down on the tarp also helped to replenish the energy levels. Leaving Naarden, we had a really fast section as a group of cyclists on e-bikes were trying to catch us up. We clunked into top gear and gave them a good run for their money over an 8km section, before stopping for another coffee break at Muiden.



A cushion covered bench in the shade provided the rest we needed after the un-official race.



And in any case, we had to stop, while some boats were let though the swing bridge we'd stopped by. Three 'swings' later, we decided we should probably get going again...



There really are some marvelous bike about. This one seemed to the choice of the connoisseur parent.



We were both pretty tired by now, but still had a final 15km to go to make it back to Amsterdam.



There was much delight and rejoicing when we arrived into the city centre and a serious sense of relief to be out of the fast-flowing city bike traffic. Down by a canal, we pulled over onto the edge of a busy bar and ordered some celebratory beers.



We'd made it - over 400km of travel around the so called 'Golden Circle of the Zuiderzee.



Just around the corner of the bar was the bike shop, where we returned the hired bikes.



We stopped the GPS unit at 72.14km. A big day for us!



All that was left was to strip the bikes of our panniers, which tucked away into our big bag, which the bike store had been storing for us. They looked after it while we walked around the block for more drinks and a big feed. We returned a few hours later, picked up our gear and took a bus to the airport. Just like that, we were done.