Hook of Holland to Zandvoot
My plans changed. I felt so refreshed after a full nights sleep that I choose to cycle north rather than observing a day of rest. I meet Alex and Will tow english cyclists over for easter, and we had coffee while they waited for a train to take them northward and I for a break in the foggy drizzle that covered holland.
They showed me which sign to look for, the Noordzee LF1, which might be the only Dutch that I need to know.
Soon I was riding through dunes and tussock, past acres of greenhouses on a cycle specific path of smooth asphalt. I was eating up the kilometers so quickly that I forgot that I hadn’t had breakfast.
All day the sun struggled to break through the grey that lay over this new country. Still to me everything was surreal and beautiful, perhaps even more so for the mist and the flat light that turned the sands and grass to monochrome.
A creak has begun on Rose (thats the name that has developed from Rocinante, which is a grand name, but too long to say and write.) I listen for it as I go, hungitn it, trying to identify its source, so that I might silence it with a wrench or twist of nut.
Tightening my lowrider rack, and making padding of insulation tape, to soften the vibration of the panniers doesn’t get rid of the problem.
The problem with such well indicated cycle routes as the LF1 is that you become dependent on their signage. The absence of that little green and white marker at an intersection sends me into a panic. Here its because cycling along them is so good, that I don’t want to deviate from the route, so easy, lined with great landscape, and frequented with cyclists, that all receive a manic “hello”.
I have a weight problem. Other people see it too, and have commented. not maliciously, they don’t know how much it pains me to look “well prepared” or “ready for anything” which are euphemisms for heavy and overloaded. But what can I do, I’m big boned. There is little left for me to throw away (at the moment). I am prepared for life. My only hope is to reorganise things to hide how much I have, pack tighter, more efficiently, put a corset on her.
Tonight I paid for accomodation, and it wasn’t cheap. Thats the killer, that sucks budgets dry, and I want to avoid it if I can. But I was feeling cold and lazy, and didn’t fancy the anxiety of wild camping on my first night of a foreign county. So there are my excuses. I go into town, Zandvoot, and have a few beers till night falls.
