Day 3 – For the second day in a row, our trip started later than we had planned it to. This time we couldn’t really help it because just when we were about leave, the president of the DFS football club wanted us to take part in what seemed like a never-ending SeaMeCycle photo shoot. Most of us had a good night sleep, except for Annelies and Dulce, who had woken up on the floor in the middle of the night because their air matrasses suddenly decided to die. Nevertheless, we jumped on our bikes again, together with Jan and Erik, two friendly Dutch men with a passion for biking who joined us for about 30 kilometers. Today, our trip couldn’t have started any nicer. From silent, small villages to magnificent stretched-out dams along the coastline; the Dutch landscape has it all. Now that I mention it, I don’t think I have ever ridden a bicycle on bike paths that were nearly as good and smooth as those of the Netherlands. No wonder they call it a paradise for cyclists! However, whereas the bike paths in the Netherlands are perfect, the road works are the exact opposite. When cycling to Rozenburg we bumped into a road block that told us we couldn’t go any further and after searching other options, we hit the road again, taking a one hour detour. All well for us - we are cyclists after all - but after that one hour ride I just mentioned, we arrived at a place that seemed so familiar, almost too familiar… Turned out to be that the place we arrived at, was just the back of the road block from an hour earlier, pointing out that the road works hadn’t even started yet. What a waste of our time! Around 2 o’ clock we parked our bikes in Hellevoetsluis, just next to a lake and as we hadn’t had lunch that day, we decided to grab a bite somewhere nearby. Although, when Jolle saw the ‘Zeeuwse mosselen’ sign just in front of the restaurant ‘Aquarius’, grabbing a bite soon changed into eating large portions of mussels. We entered the place with a big smile on our face and not even the fact that our waitress was extremely rude and grumpy - us arriving at 2’o clock meant working late for her - could change that: we had our mussels! By the way, today a lot of things happened that I still wanted to share with you. Here are some of the most compelling little stories: Sadly, Frederik from Mobiel left us along the road today after cycling more than 200 kilometers with us. Halfway our route we said farewell and Frederik told us he would think of us when he was stretching his legs under his desk tomorrow. How considerate of him… I’m not sure if Muriel was trying to intimidate our two Dutch friends from Burgh-Haamstede or was just not paying attention, but the moment we saw Erik nearly going down a ditch after being hit by the trailer of the tandem, we all held our breaths for a few seconds. Luckily for him, the man managed to stay on his bike and so up until now, we’re proud to say that the SeaMeCycle bike trip has been completely accident-free. Speaking of accidents, Muriel almost caused another disaster this day! When she was filming along the road, a cyclist got so distracted by the looks of her that he bumped into a roadblock up ahead. When Muriel asked him what happened, he just said something about sunglasses and swiftly continued his way. The last story I have for you is the tale of how Jolle Desloover turned into Jolle De ‘Uitslover’. Some 15 kilometers from our final checkpoint, a man with a racing bike was speeding down the road and mockingly shouted at us that we had to push a little harder. Now, boys wouldn’t be boys if they would let someone get away with that, so Jolle and Simon chased after him and even kept following him at 30 km/h. Pretty impressive! Oh, did I mention that we’re on a boat right now? No? Well, we are and we’re arriving in Harwich in the early morning!
Posted on: Mon, 07 Oct 2013 05:13:37 +0000
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