Category Archives: Places

Vlaardingen

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Tonight’s view

Practically all the way across the Netherlands today: train from Arnhem to Dordrecht, waterbus to Rotterdam and cycling to Vlaardingen, where we are right beside the river. (I’ve given up trying to distinguish between the Maas, the Lek and the Waal. Oh, and the Scheur.) Completely different backdrop to previous riverside stays: Emmerich has only green fields on the other side whereas Vlaardingen has oil refineries. But watching barges float by is the same restful occupation.

The end of the holiday. I suppose I ought to have seen enough to offer a few insights, but I’m not sure they’re worth anything.

There are staff shortages: every shop, every back of loo door, every van invites you to come and work for them. Hotel room cleaning during a multi-day stay is unusual. The hotel in Meppen used a robot vacuum cleaner, which politely stopped to let us pass in the corridor.

I may as well use machines to buy train tickets: I can’t make a worse job than trained staff. The tickets I bought in the ticket office for today’s train journey were the wrong kind. Fortunately the guard let us off: it was obviously an unwitting mistake. (He wasn’t so sympathetic to the young brown man who was attempting to travel on yesterday’s ticket and turfed him off at the next station. I wondered how to interpret this. Ageing white people are seen as making honest mistakes but young brown migrants are seen as trying to pull a fast one?)

I’m fitter now than a fortnight ago, but mounting and dismounting my bicycle is not as effortless as it once was (sigh).

Emmerich am Rhein to Arnhem

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Instead of ending a holiday as usual with Emmerich to Nijmegen into a headwind, today we did Emmerich to Arnhem into a headwind. With some rain. It was pleasant beside the river and, once the weather changed, an easy ride into the centre of Arnhem. Like Utrecht, Arnhem has direct cycle routes that are heavily used: the roundabout at Airborneplein was particularly hectic. Quite fun to watch, but less fun to be part of. My kind of pootling is really not suited to Dutch city cycling, and it was a bit of a shock to find myself part of it again.

Despite Arnhem’s importance during WWII, the centre looks largely undestroyed. I had time to wander around once we had checked in, but without a map or any idea of what to see. Still enjoyable though. And they have trolley busses.

Heek to Winterswijk

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Well, Schützenfesters certainly know how to party. They didn’t keep me awake, but when I opened the window at 1.30 a.m. the marquee down the road was still jiving. The church clock struck at 5.30 a.m. and I swear I could hear the brass band playing somewhere. As I dressed, somebody was singing alleluia several times over to the accompaniment of the band outside the church. Our breakfast was slightly delayed by the waitress having to serve a few beers . . . and the first parade of the day started just as we were leaving. I really don’t know what to make of it: history, community spirit, unsettling vibes under the cheerful booziness, the self-deprecating silliness of carrying wooden sticks (representing rifles?) topped with flowers so that they looked like a morris-dancing local militia. Had I lived in the town during the Thirty Years War, I might have been glad if a group of trained men were ready to defend it – and perhaps there were similar groups in Ukraine until three years ago.

The rest of the day was a return ride unto the Netherlands in hot sunshine and a gentle headwind. Piet Mondrian lived in Winterswijk for a time, but that is as much as I know.

Papenburg to Heek

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Back to a boring maximum speed of about 22 kph, so to do this distance we needed the assistance of the train from Papenburg to Rheine. The usual anxiety about getting our bikes on the train, so I checked with the ticket office beforehand. (A ticket office: there’s luxury.) Question: where was the bike space? Answer: each carriage has bike spaces front and back. Total number of bikes conveyed: 24. (More in the summer holiday season.) This seemed like riches indeed – but the reality is that if a train has 24 bike spaces, there will be 23 bicycles on it – particularly if it’s the day after Himmelfahrt. We had no problem at Papenburg, but the train quickly filled up.

We cycled the same route out of Rheine as a week ago along the easy-peasy disused railway, but this time into a sunny headwind. Heek is en fête – nice for Heek but not for anyone hoping for an early night. It’s the town’s Schützenfest – a concept I have difficulty in getting my head around. Schützen means to protect, but this kind of thing is all about guns and shooting. I suppose I should think of it as a celebration of the historical tradition of local self-protection – an early kind of Home Guard perhaps? – and target-shooting is part of it. Also included is parading in green jackets and dark green ties behind a local band – and lots of drinking.

We arrived in Heek in good time so headed off in nostalgic mood along the 100 Schlösser Route to see Burg Nienborg. How many have we ticked off now?

Papenburg

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Today is Himmelfahrt – Ascension Day – so (as I’ve noted before) liquid picnics seem to be the tradition. Unfortunately for the picknickers, the weather has also been rather liquid.

Papenburg sits amongst fenland, which made for a dull rest-day ride before the drizzle set in properly. The canals out of the town are dead straight and lined with houses; the only charm are the waterside irises. But there is always something to spark interest: here it was cycling above an automotive test track, which was unexpected. Even more exciting was the misbehaviour of my cycle computer: I’ve noticed once before that wind turbines can disrupt it, but today I observed that I was travelling at speeds of 86 kph into a head wind – and not a turbine in sight. My maximum speed – and I just had to take a photo – came in at 105.9 kph. Since we both clocked 105.9 kph, I must conclude – sadly – that something must have sent the computer haywire.

Dörpen to Papenburg

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A short day with the unexpected pleasure of discovering Papenburg. Before that, though, there was a 1,000-year-old lime tree in Heede to see – propped up and garlanded with barrier tape, but nonetheless green and still flowering in abundance. A pleasant ride thereafter, with a coffee stop in the commercial outskirts that had hollowed out Rhede centre.

Looking at the map beforehand, I had a flashback re the Meyer Werft – shipyard (wharf?) – on the Ems in Papenburg and an article in a German lesson years ago about the shipbuilder. Their current line is cruise ships. Since Papenburg is quite definitely inland, it boggles the mind to think of a newly built ship leaving the shipyard and shimmying its way to the sea.

The industrial outskirts didn’t prepare me for the centre of Papenburg. It’s delightful. Instead of a Hauptstraße it has a Hauptkanal just like a Dutch town. (Harlingen came to mind, but it’s years since I was there.) Since we are staying here for two nights, it couldn’t be better.