Thanks to everyone that voted in the Who Wore It Best Flower Pant Poll. I won! It was a close race, with many ups and downs - for me a low was when I accidentally voted for Pierre. His low- when his own mother confessed she would not be voting for him. There was one wild suggestion from reader Sarah S, that we share the pants. But, after his defeat Pierre, in a fit of rage, stole the pants and turned them into short shorts for himself. Photos coming soon.

Now on to the travels!

Hamburg - Take Two

What a difference the day makes!

While we would have happily continued peddling our way through Denmark and other cycle-friendly countries in Europe we were bumping up against our 90-day visa and needed to find a way out of the Schengen Area. Most European countries are a part of the Schengen but the UK isn’t so we booked a ferry from the Netherlands to England, set to leave in a week.

We had no desire to revisit the Hamburg train station after our last small disaster* there, so for several days we plotted ways to avoid it. We nearly booked ferry tickets to the tiny island of Heligoland (fascinating history) but in the end, we didn’t have time for imaginative rural routes. It turns out that all trains lead to Hamburg, and the most practical way to get to our ferry was via train - Hamburg to Amsterdam.

But, as I scrolled through the ticket options on my beloved DB train app, I felt the allure of the night train pulling me in again. I wanted to bike in Holland before we left Europe, and we didn’t have much time.

“It’s faster,” I said to Pierre. “And cheaper!”

“No way,” Pierre was adamant. “We tried that.”

And really, why should people who are mostly cycling be in such a hurry to get somewhere.

So, we left in the morning. We broke the ride into two days. And it was way better.

We had a transfer in Tønder where we spent a few hours exploring the museum and art exhibition, before having cookies and coffee and then biking back to the station. You don’t get to do that on a night train!

Lounge chair in the museum’s Hans J. Wegner, “ The King of Chairs” exhibit.

We arrived in the home of the Hamburger, after a perfectly pleasant ride through the country. We were no longer afraid of the Hamburg Train Station and that evening after we relaxed in our Hamburg budget hotel room, happily watching Euro Cup football on the tiny TV, we slept long and easy.

Holland

“A city campground?” Pierre was skeptical. “In Amsterdam?”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said, quickly scrolling past a one-star review.

We had tried a couple of hotels. A nice one in the historic centre was $450EU for a night. The next one we tried, in a dingy cement building covered in orange party flags (orange being the Dutch colour for football), was $250EU.

We went to the campground. And it was fine.

Was there a man sleeping on the couch of the reception room? Were our neighbours just 3 feet away blasting tunes well past 1 am? Did a man yell at another man to turn down his TV at 3 am? Did we observe a woman in her nightie screaming into her phone about the lousy work ethic of male prostitutes? Did Lucas get locked in an outdoor toilet for 15 minutes? Did Pierre shower in the dark? All yes.

But honestly, it was fine.**

The next day we packed up in record time and biked straight to a bakery where we ate delicious pastries, cycled to the ocean and forgot all about the campground.

We spent 3 days biking along the coastal bike path through dunes and seaside party towns. And it was glorious. It was hot, the campgrounds were amazing and the scenery was stunning.

It was also pretty busy.

It’s wonderful to cycle here but it’s also no joke. There is a flow and the flow is fast.

Visiting the Future

It wasn’t just that there were so many people cycling. It was that everyone was on or in a bicycle - the very old, the very young. Teenagers in packs, workers, and of course, there were loads of cargo bikes everywhere being driven by parents and grandparents.

And there was every type of bicycle imaginable. Nurses cycling with severely handicapped and bed ridden patients.

Some bicycles worked with hand pedals, others lying down. I even saw a treadmill bicycle.

This is a photo from the internet (Business Insider) but it’s similar to the one I saw. It’s called a Loplift.

Even the paths were innovative.

Solar-powered bike path

It was fascinating to be not just in a bike-centred town or region, but in a bike-centred country.

But as more than one person told me, “It wasn’t always like this.”

Back in the 70s’ the number of children being hit by cars was up to 400 per year. And that sparked a whole movement called, “The "Stop de Kindermoord" (Stop the Child Murder).

This movement, along with gas shortages led to the Dutch national government and city municipalities shifting emphasis from highway construction to bicycle path infrastructure for more than a decade.

Today, the Netherlands has over 37,000 kilometres of traffic-free bike paths. Which is pretty impressive for such a small nation. Unsurprisingly, Holland has the best bike path engineering guide (The CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic). Also unsurprising is that the country is listed as the 6th happiest place in the world- even higher for those over 60.

I know it can’t only be bike paths that make the Dutch happy. After all the French have bike paths but they aren’t in the top ten.***

Straandbeast

One hot afternoon we wandered down the beach for a few km past several nude 80-year-olds.

“This is inappropriate!” Lucas ranted.

But we trudged along until we spotted a few of Theo Jansen’s StraandBeest (beach beasts). Although these weren’t moving across the beach when we were there- it was still very cool to see them up close. I recommend watching a video on YouTube about him and his beasts. It’s fascinating!

Dutch Pastries

We were only cycling in Holland for a few days so we didn’t have enough time to try many desserts - but I did have this delicious almond cookie called called "Gevulde Koek".

Gevulde Koeken: a buttery, crumbly cookie filled with almond paste. Yum!

Next Post

Find out how our transition to cycling on the left side of the road goes!

Footnotes

*See post, “Night train through Germany”.

**Lucas would like me to note that as far as he is concerned it wasn’t fine. It was the worst campground we stayed in and he would only give it 1/2 a star. 8-years can be fierce critics.

***France is listed as 27th this year.