{"id":99,"date":"2009-05-03T05:07:22","date_gmt":"2009-05-03T11:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterstenhouse.com\/journal\/?p=99"},"modified":"2024-04-26T05:29:42","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T11:29:42","slug":"to-the-north","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterstenhouse.com\/journal\/to-the-north\/","title":{"rendered":"To The North"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"img_0356\"<\/p>\n

Somewhere South of Den Helder to Zurich.<\/p>\n

Morning arrives like a gift, and I am grateful, for not being discovered by hordes of anti tent yobs, and more fore being dry with my belongings likewise.
\nI pack up quick, and push my bike up the ridge, to be greeted by the sun rising over misty dutch farms. I buy a coffee down the road, at a small cafe down the road, which is only open to serve the boisterous fishermen congregated in the carpark. When I ask for a cup to take away (for my own coffee later) she gives me a butter yellow mug. Thinking she’s misunderstood, I go through a charade to explain that I am going to take it “never to return”. sure she says. It very grateful a second time that morning, I make us of it a kilometer down the road, civilised, sat at a picninc table, whatching the mist lift and greeting the lycrists that go by. I ride onward to Den Helder.
\nAnother flat tyre, but its not a bother, repairing it on the side of the road, savouring the rest and being watched by bemused sheep. As I put the back wheel on I notice the source of my creaks and wobbles is a broken spoke that i haven’t seen for days. I am so glad this vintage wheel has 40 of them, or 39 now.\u00a0 So while I have been managing fine on one less spoke for probably 100s of kilometers, now that I know its not there , I am always worried. All my thoughts return to it and are interrupted by it, is the wheel okay, when can I repair it, when will it collapse and throw to the road. So I treat Rose gently, and fortunately the rest of the road is smooth, especially along the vast dyke in the north. Its 35km long into a light headwind. I had imagined riding alond a green ridge that goes to the horizon, with seas on either side of me. The reality is it like riding beside a highway with neither great views or interest.\u00a0 Still the experience made the beer in Zurich on the other side taste better.
\na little way out of town, I pitch my tent on the incline of a great sea barrier.<\/p>\n