Day 19. 2131km, 12th of Aug. London! "Keep to the left"

Last day of cycling today!

Got up early, just before six and was on the road by six thirty. I wasn't Surat what time the ferries would leave and how often as it was a Sunday so I wanted to make it there as early as possible, as I almost had 20km to do before boarding th ferry and another 140 on English soil.

I had a baguette and some cheese as soon as I entered Calais, and that is pretty much as French as I got.

There where a lot of people waiting to board the boats, and a lot of cars too. No cyclists though. I bought my ticket and rolled on to the DFDS ferry just before they closed the gates.

Once on board I relaxed, more than I had done on the whole trip. I started to realize that it was soon over and that a couple of months of planning had actually got me this far. I really did not want it to end, but I really did want a shower.

Getting of e ferry was interesting, keeping to the left took some getting used to and you could tell that so did the French drivers unloading the vessel behind me.

I had arranged with my friend Erik to meet me in Dover so that we could do the last leg together, when I found him at the train station in Dover we waited a couple of minutes for a some of his friends to arrive before setting off.

Dover-London proved to be one of the hilliest parts of my trip. This was no problem for Ed, James and Erik who where riding road bikes and a fixie, but for my loaded Brompton and me it was more of a challenge. Luckily enough the English countryside is full of English people, and with that comes a great selection of pubs. We found one with an appropriate name and stopped for lunch and a pint. There is a lot of water in beer and the temperature was about 28C so we filled up our water bottles as well. With normal water though.

 

Erik had printed out a 23 page long google map with what allegedly was a good cycle rout from Dover to London. We did however manage to get ourselves onto propper downhill bike inclines and other off road paths. By nightfall and a pub stop later we did start to see the city of London and its financial district towering up in the sunset.

We crossed tower bridge just as the closing ceremony of the London Olympics, lots of lights and loads of people on the streets so it was a great welcome party.

Our goal for the day was to get to St. Paul's Cathedral, and so we did. We took some photos and then headed our separate ways, tired but happy. Erik and I cycled up to Liverpool st. where I folded my Brompton for the first time in quite some time. 160km exactly with an average speed of 15km/h for me. I saw some other Bromptons at the station so we felt well at home.

 

 

 

 

 

On our way home we passed the Olympic stadium where the ceremony was still going on. That is basically what I saw of the Olympic games and from what I've heard the city is now in post Olympic depression with nothing good to watch on tv anymore.

 

Day 18. 1971km, 11th of Aug.

Today has been really good, managed to come a long way and kept a good average speed up. I slept quite close to the Belgian border, some 20km east of it. I realized I crossed the border by looking at the GPS because there was no sign telling me that I was entering Belgium. So I turned around and headed back to get a picture by the sign that I thought I had missed, but there just was none. I cycled through the country in just a couple of hours, stopping only once for some lunch. When I got to the French border the same thing happened. There was no sign saying that I was leaving Belgium, just one welcoming me to France.
 

So basically, I went through Belgium almost without noticing.

Once I entered France everything changed again, once again no one spoke English. I had a baguette and some cheese, no wine though. I do have to give some credit to the Dutch. When I asked if someone spoke English, they would say that yes, but just a little bit. Then when they started talking they spoke perfect English. Here, they say they speak some English, and then just carry on in French.

Great stuff.

Other than that, roads where good and I managed to find a campsite 18km outside of Calais. I did have a burger on the way by the road. And what a burger it was, I think I managed my kcal intake for the rest of the week during that pit stop.

Vive le France!

Day 17. 1869km, 10th of Aug.

I left the outskirts of the Hague and headed towards the many islands in the north west of the Netherlands. It took many bridges and a couple of ferries to get across and close to the Belgian border. It was very hot and almost no wind, the little wind I felt came in from the side and the ocean. So i made sure to use plenty of sunblock. I cycled some 40km close to the water, just above the beaches that ran alongside the bike path.

Very nice cycling in this area and I kinda hoped that it would continue like this all the way to Calais.

It started to get quite late and at 22:30 I put up my tent. The people next to me where very nice and brought me some bread and tea.

Day 16. 1760km, 9th of Aug.

Woke up close to Amsterdam this morning, some 20km east of the city and rolled in early. Met some nice people on my way in to the Brompton junction Amsterdam. I was not the only cyclist on the road, there where so many bikes crowding the streets. I crossed many bridges until I reached the shop.

I was directed to the right street by a new found friend and had no problem finding the shop from there. Vincent received me and showed me around the shop, had a coffee and looked at the different bikes. They have around 30 bikes in stock and loads of accessories. I charged up some electronics as I was running low on batteries thanks to the German weather. Cycling through the Netherlands had proven to be great weather wise. Since I crossed the Swedish Danish border, it had rained for at least one hour every day without fail.

The shop only opened a couple of months ago and was very nicely decorated. I took many pictures and then almost two hours later continued on to the Hague. Passed Schiphol airport, just at the end of the runway with airplanes taking off every two minutes over me.

Finding my way out of Amsterdam proved harder than I thought it would be, once you get on the wrong side of a channel and there aren't any bridges, all you can do is carry on along the water until a bridge comes your way.

I cycled close to the beach almost all the way, it was very hot and the beaches looked very nice, packed with people.

Day 15. 1638km, 8th of Aug.

Tried to get up early today, wanted to make sure I got some time in Arnhem before I left for Amsterdam. The first place I visited on my way into town was the airborne cemetery. To get there I cycled through I forest. I passed a man walking his dog and asked him to take a picture of me. We started talking and it turned out that he also rode a Brompton. I asked him about the woods, and he told me that we where standing on the same grounds the fighting during Operation Market Garden took place, that they still find bits and pieces of equipment in the area that remind them of what happened here not so long ago. We walked to a tree where a piece of artillery had left its scar and continued towards the cemetery.

I was alone when I enter the cementery except for a gardener tending some hedges. It was extremely well kept, the man I met earlier had told me that pupils in the schools of Arnhem tend the graves as part of their history lessons, in that way, wha thappened there would never be forgotten.

I walked around and after some 15 minuted another man had entered the grounds. He looked old, but not old enough to have been involved in the fighting. So not a WW2 vet. After some time our paths crossed and he asked me about my bike which I had left outside the gate. We talked for a bit and he asked me how come I had visited the cementery. He said that there're few places like this, that he had visited Chernobyl, Auschwitz, Treblinka and many other terrible places, "there is something very special and sad about a military cementery and to see your fellow soldiers in one."

After the cementery I left for the airborne museum, it's located in an old hotel that served as headquarters during the fighting. They had an interactive airborne experience where you walked through different sceneries, from jumping out of an airplane to reaching the town in the middle of the night. I spent at least 2 hours there and later cycled down to the famous bridge portrayed in so many movies. It was destroyed during the war but has now been rebuilt as the John Froster Bridge.

The ride from Arnhem to the outskirts of Amsterdam was very pleasant, good temperature and good roads. The sun was setting during my last hour of cycling and I managed to stay close to the water for a couple of hours. The sights in the Netherlands have been nothing short of breathtaking and I'd like to return and do some more touring around here soon.

The only negative thing with so much water around is that it attracts a lot of mosquitos, I had to wipe a lot of them off my glasses every now and then, they would also get stuck in my beard and fly into my mouth and nose.

Day 14. 1512km. 7th of Aug. An encounter with Netherlands' finest police.

Today really has been eventful. After that I crossed the German border yesterday I immediately started looking for some place to set up camp and did so some 7km inside the Netherlands. The road 213 that I had been on all of yesterday turned into N346. The road looked just the same so I kept on. As I had now decided to go for a detour and not go straight up to Amsterdam, but hit Arnhem first, I looked up the routs heading south west. Both my GPS which is set to "bike mode" and google maps told me to cycle along N346. Great I thought, as it lead nearly straight to Arnhem, passing through a bunch of smaller cities.

The great thing about the Netherlands is that it is a very bike friendly country. A lot of the time when going down then N346 there was a bike path alongside it. After crossing a bridge however the bike path suddenly ended, even though there had been a bike sign instructing me to cross the bridge if I was heading for Arnhem. So I kept on going on the road... I think it was 3km to the next town, but half way, there was a rest stop, so I decided to pause and have a cup of coffee. Halfway through my coffee a police car comes into the rest stop. There was another car there as well, the driver on his phone, as you're not allowed to drive and use your phone at the same time. I paid little attention to the patrol car at first. Then both the driver and his colleague stepped out of their vehicle.

-you from Sweden? The sergeant asked, looking at my flag.

-yeahpp.

-Got a flat tire?

-Nope, just having a cup of coffee before I keep going.

-Where are you going?

-To London. They both laughed.

-Well, you are not allowed to ride a bike on this road.

-why not?

-Because it is sort of a highway. Someone called us saying that there was someone on a bike with a Swedish flag on this road...

As I've only got Kevlar in my tyres, I soon decided not to make a run for it.

-But both my gps and google maps show that I am allowed to ride my bike on this road... I explained, showed them the maps on the iPad and Garmin.

-well, it is a semi-highway. All roads that begin with "N" are.

Apparently those exist in the Netherlands. As the road I came on was the only one leading out of there, I asked them what to do now? I had to find another way, but that I was not allowed to go on the road I just came on, nor continue to where I was going. So they left me no option...

-So, can you give me a lift to the next town?

-haha, no, there is no possibility. We have NO space for a bike.

-yes you do. They had clearly not noticed that it was a foldie.

Two minutes later, my Brompton and gear was nicely folded into the back seat of the police car. I don't know, but it could be the first Brompton ever arrested and fastened securely in the back seat of a patrol car.

We had a nice chat in the car and when we got to the next town, they dropped me off, helped me get my gear together, we shook hands and off I went. People looked at us, and I could not tell you what they thought of this whole thing, but it must have looked peculiar.

A couple of hours later I made it to Arnhem. Making sure not to cycle on any N-roads.

At the airborne museum in Arnhem