Wednesday, 27 July 2022

Heading for Rotterdam

With just shy of 1000km now travelled on our bikes this summer, we’re heading into the final few days of the tour. We’ve got two days to get to the Hook of Holland and todays ride has put us on the outskirts of Rotterdam, so things are looking promising. It was a good but gentle pace to start us off until we reached the end of the road.



Happily, a ferry soon turned up for us and for 0.95€ we were granted passage across the River Waal.





The river turned out to be a major defensive weak spot during Napoleonic times, as we later found out at nearby Fort Vuren. It’s an enormous old fort built into the river bank, with walls over 3m thick! Happily for us, these days it’s less effective as a fort (as discovered when German planes just flew over the top of it!), but is a fine site for a cafe!



After a cup of coffee in the sun, we had a look around the inside, which can be rented for parties or you can even stay the night.





Having seen some other customers being handed good looking plates of food, we abandoned our plan to go and get something from a supermarket and got stuck into a very fulfilling lunch!



We left feeling rested, well fed and ready for a bit more peddling…





There’s been no mistaking which country we’re in. There are windmills everywhere. 





Mid-afternoon, after a quick sleep on a park bench, we picked up some food to cook for dinner later.



We also stopped for an ice cream at a farm shop, but it wasn’t very restful as a lady fell off her bike and had to be taken away in an ambulance! 



The last leg was into a stiff headwind and I tucked in behind Clare for most of it to make use of her slipstream. A steep bridge over a waterway gave us the days ‘high point’ just before we reached our last camp of the expedition. If all goes according to plan, tomorrow night, we’ll be in a cabin on the ferry to Harwich!….



But tonight’s a tent night!



Total Ride: 55km

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