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Today's Route
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Travelogue
We woke to a fairly insistent, blustery wind this morning and couldn't help but conclude we were in for a tough day. As any cyclist knows, if it's windy then it will be a headwind. The wind is never behind you but you do occasionally have inexplicably good days where your legs seem turbo charged!
As we were leaving the campsite, we got talking to another cyclist, a French lady who'd been camped not far from us. She explained that like us, she was heading to Rotterdam but that because of the windy conditions, she was planning to cycle only as far as Dordrecht where she would board a ferry which would take 90 minutes to carry her and her bike all the way to Rotterdam. She said Dordrecht was only 27 km away and cycled off ahead of us.
We set off and soon lost sight of the French lady. She wasn't going particularly fast so we assumed she'd taken a different route to us.
The wind wasn't too bad. Our route meandered, following bends in the river or perhaps rivers (plural) and this meant we were frequently changing direction. Sometimes there was a fairly strong headwind. Other times there was no wind at all amd happily, and rather inexplicably, our legs seemed turbo charged!
The sun showed itself. And then hid. And then peeped from behind clouds. The sky was a moving mosaic of fluffy white clouds, black, rain-filled clouds, and clear blue.
We spent quite some time cycling in a large area of wetlands. Waterways and bridges were everywhere. It was beautiful and peaceful.
We soon needed to cross a wide section of river using the first of four ferries we'd end up using this fine day. We paid the pilot, rolled on, were ferried across, and rolled off on the other side. It was brilliant.
M1 noticed a few raindrops. Big ones. He mentioned this to M2, and each inspected the sky and the ominous, dark cloud directly above.
Just in case, M1 dismantled his solar panel and battery and moved both into the shelter of his handlebar bag. Pretty much as that was done, it poured down. We got very wet, very quickly.
But 15 minutes later, it was all over. The rain stopped. The sporadic wind remained. The clouds of various colours continued to skate across the sky. And eventually, the sun started to find its way through. M1 was convinced we'd seen the last of the rain and installed the solar panel and battery on the rear of The Mule once again.
After more wetlands cycling and a couple of ferries, we arrived in Dordrecht. There was a cafe right by the ferry port so we sat down and ordered food and drink. M2 had coffee and carrot cake. M1 had coffee and the Dutch Healthy Eating option, namely chips (fries) with a big dollop of truffle mayonnaise mixed with grated cheese. Yum.
We discussed whether or not to take the ferry from here to Rotterdam. We'd already cycled 45 km of an expected 80 km so were more than halfway. We speculated that the French cyclist must have taken a direct route (the motorway perhaps??) rather than our meandering but very scenic route. We were enjoying our day very much so we decided to keep cycling.
We crossed the river by ferry and continued cycling through this beautiful Netherlands wetlands landscape. We saw windmills occasionally, some of them in operation. There's something mesmerising and graceful about these old machines.
We cycled along the river, the view largely obscured by tall reeds, when all of a sudden, not one, not two but more than ten windmills appeared on the opposite bank, seen through a gap in the reeds. It was an amazing sight. Without knowing about it in advance, we'd reached the UNESCO World Heritage site of Kinderdijk. It was absolutely fantastic and judging by the number of visitors along the path, a renowned and popular attraction.
We were so glad we hadn't decided to take the ferry from Dordrecht to Rotterdam.
The cycling continued to be thoroughly enjoyable and eventually we could see the outskirts of Rotterdam, the second largest city in the Netherlands. We crossed a large motorway bridge and cycled by safe cycle paths into the city.
We're now in an apartment for a couple of nights and will be exploring Rotterdam on foot tomorrow.
Today definitely ranks in the top five days of this trip for wonderful cycling, sights and scenery.
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