(If you get bored by my long texts, don't despair, there are lots of pictures at the end of this blog that I forgot to put in the story from the day before. Also, don't miss the live links I have added to the text of this blog. They should open in a separate window when you click on them)
Well, Erika was involved in her conference for the entire day, so after having a nice big breakfast with her at 7:30 AM, I went back up to the room and did some research on where I would find bike shops and electronics stores since I was in need of a way to download pictures from our camera.
At 11:30 I checked out a bike and headed off for Nordwijk and the ocean again.
Now let me say that Steve Miller, good friend and inspiration (as one of the "Grampies" currently logging way more miles that we ever will in Grampies Go By the Books ) uses a phrase in his blogs that I am going to steal and use also: "noodling about". It is just such a perfect description of the kind of cycling they and we often do, kind of an exploratory wandering around, either because one doesn't have anywhere particular to go or more often, because one is not sure where one IS going, even if one has somewhere one wants to go :)
So on this day I spent a lot of time noodling about, sometimes for the one reason and sometimes for the other. There were 3 tracks logged by my GPS during the day and if you look at them closely you will see just how much wandering around I was doing. The first hour was spent noodling about here, around Noordwijk
First, I explored a little up the coast from the main beach area to see the trail that leads off into the dunes. This whole area along the coast is dunes and brown sand beaches for miles and miles in both directions. And good bike paths follow the coast for miles through these dunes. After going just a little way up the dunes trail, I turned around and went back into the village to look for a bike shop. There I found the shop open and that they did in fact rent e-bikes that I was considering renting later in the week when Erika had more time to explore.
While in the bike shop I had turned the GPS off, so when I started up again, the next hour was logged as another separate route, Route # 2 for the day
During this hour I searched for another bike shop that doesn't exist any more, apparently, then cycled down to another part of town where there was another bike shop that was closed on Mondays. For a while I chatted with a young woman who saw me looking at my map and stopped to ask if I needed directions. She recommended I look at an area that I found later in the day. But first I found myself back where Erika and I had been the day before in the shopping area of Noordwijk-Binnen. Here I turned my GPS off again, so the end of the second route of the day. I found that the electronics shop was closed on Mondays. But there were lots of stores open that I could get good things to eat from.
The 3rd route for the day was spent exploring, first leaving town going south and west but blocked from the ocean by high hills that were the dunes. So I worked my way back north towards Noordwijk aam Zee and discovered where I could go up to the big old Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin and the beach district around it that the local lady had told me was the place to go where the locals go instead of the tourist district. From there I headed south for a ways to see the paved path that leads through the dunes going south all the way to The Hague, a largish city to the south. I could see the sky scrapers of The Hague in the distance, about 25 km. away.
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| Just off the paved bike path, sand path leading down through the dunes to the North Sea |
So before I send this to publish, here are some pictures from the day before when we were exploring and getting used to the whole biking experience here in the Netherlands.
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| This picture shows how even when on a busy street we have a protected bike path to ride down |
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| We followed a canal with houseboats on it |
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| Typical bike street signs in Netherlands |
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| So pretty |
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| Look, this one has a basement. Erika claims it was floating, but I claim it was on a foundation behind a retaining wall for the canal |
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| Across the canal, a train whizzed by every few minutes |
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| Typical traffic when on a road that we share with cars |
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| We've noticed there are lots of horse pastures in Holland |
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| On the way home we were catching up to 2 young men and Erika said to me "Ring your bell" (because hers didn't work). So I rang my bell and then as I went by them I said "I have a bell!" in my silly I'm so excited voice. This got them laughing and so, not to be outdone by two old foreigners, they speeded up and passed us. In this picture, Erika has overtaken them again and is about to pass. |
