Category: Places

Haltern am See to Senden

A pleasant, largely rural ride on roads that we have cycled before. We came across the prisoner of war graveyard of Hausdülmen again and stopped. So many Russian dead, captured fighting for a country and emperor that soon ceased to exist. Lying in a corner of north-west Germany because their new country didn’t want them back. The rows of stone markers seemed, for one gruesome moment, to resemble molehills or – even worse – slightly raised manhole covers.

Coffee in Lüdinghausen (no photos this time) and on the way out we noticed the painted trunks of the trees beside the cycle path. A Baumschützprojekt – but I haven’t yet found what the trees are being protected from. Some even had a few strands of ivy tied round the trunks as if trying to propagate it.

As for the rest of the ride – it was enjoyable and included another castle that I didn’t remember from previous holidays. Nothing special – just agricultural land and some nice cornflowers. The weather was perfect for a little bit of exertion.

Xanten to Haltern am See

We’ve been this way before, but it is still pleasant, particularly since we finally had a properly sunny day. A few changes: we crossed the Rhine on the road bridge into Wesel. As last year, we picked up the cycle path beside the main road for several miles until we ditched it in favour of a disused railway line popular with Sunday cyclists.

Then a turning that looked vaguely familiar but I decided I must be mistaken for shortly afterwards we came across a small group of water buffalo – definitely not something I would have forgotten! But no, I was right – I realised we had been this way before when I saw the logs where we had stopped for a break last September. (Honestly! The inconsequential things that memories are made of.) The water buffalo must be a recent addition.

Beers to Xanten

A varied day’s cycling to take us across the border: main road to the Maas and then, after the ferry crossing, a green route beside the river and through woods on an old railway line (the Boxteler line) into Germany. Then a main road again for coffee in Goch – which seemed much less middle-class than towns in the Netherlands somehow. Main road again (good for covering the miles) and the Boxteler Bahn and green roads to Xanten.

This time I had just enough time to walk to the market square and admire the cathedral behind and the Gotisches Haus – which apparently re-used tufa blocks from what was left of the nearby Roman town founded by Trajan. That rather pleased me.

Rossum to Beers

At breakfast I watched storks fly over the hotel towards the Waal. Later we saw several of them in a flooded field – presumably eating their breakfast. Rain was forecast, so we made it a short day via route one. Rain started to fall after the ferry to Lith and then continued to get heavier. Like the proverbial frog in heating water, we didn’t realise how wet we were getting until we were fairly soaked.

At Ravenstein I remembered the cafe we had found last year, so we refreshed ourselves there. The rain had almost stopped by the time we arrived at Beers early afternoon but there have been a couple of downpours since then.

Schoonhoven to Rossum

It seems to me there’s not much point in taking photographs while cycling in the Netherlands, for the pleasures are incidental rather than visual. The wind at your back, mild sunshine, hearing cuckoos and frogs, cycling on paths between poplars or willows, seeing ordinary wildlife so close up (including a hen and chicks crossing a road today), little brick villages with extravagant gables, the sense of moving seamlessly and gently through the world.

The one time I would have liked to take a photograph today would have been taboo. Scene: a coffee break in Leerdam. Opposite was an ice cream parlour with a 6-foot high plastic ice-cream cone outside. A little girl of three or four, momentarily unattended by an adult, climbed onto a bench and then onto the armrest so that she could check out the cone. She reached up to it and, removing her dummy, licked one of the plastic ice cream scoops at the top. And then got down again before the adult returned. I loved it – a small child forming a hypothesis and testing it! (But I’m not always so indulgent. The last time I watched a small child exploring the world it involved using my bike as a climbing frame. I was not amused then.)

We crossed the Waal on the bridge at Zaltbommel, as last year. The noise, volume and speed of the traffic was just horrible. Sometimes when our parallel paths – me on a cycle route, traffic on a motorway – run alongside each other I am pleased at our co-existence. Today however it was just depressing. So much traffic, so much noise. We’re really not going to change our ways.

Another coffee stop in Zaltbommel, which was an attractive old town. Then the top of the embankment beside the Waal (looking high – willows were half-submerged) to Rossum and another night beside water.

Europoort to Schoonhoven

A moment of sheer euphoria as we reached the wide, continuous cycle path right outside the ferry terminal. A promise of two weeks of stress-free cycling ahead of us . . . well, at least as far as the infrastructure goes.

A slightly different route this time to avoid the Ridderkerk-Krimpen aan de Lek ferry, but otherwise the same as previous years. Good to know I can still do it (although the strong tailwind part of the way helped enormously with cycling and mindset).

Hull and Hedon

A quick visit to the Ferens art gallery this morning. An upstairs gallery had been dedicated as “the calm gallery” – art as an aid to mindfulness. Unfortunately they’d stuck an inflatable artwork in the middle of it; like a garish bouncy castle, it required air to be constantly pumped into it so the noise level meant there was no chance of hearing yourself think. As for the rest – the little time I had made me focus on just a few paintings that caught my eye. “Sunlight and Shadow” was so simple – geese for goodness sake! – and effective.

And then more Hullish cycling – this time along the dock road, the A1033, mercifully furnished with a scrappy two-way cycle path. Where was all the traffic going to? Unlike Redcar, there was certainly still industry around – Siemens making wind turbine blades and Saltend Chemical “Park” – but beyond that I had no idea. We finally left that world behind by turning off to the village of Paull beside the estuary. It seemed like another world! Then inland to Hedon again (once a port) and finally to the ferry.