Bike in the wind
Started from Vlaardingen around 10:30AM, had the usual problems finding my way out of the town, bike signs with directions are non existent in Holland when you start from the centre of any place.
Found eventually the bikepath going west, the 10 km or so to the ferry crossing the river over to Rozenburg, from there via endless detours through industryland and oil refineries to the old town of Brielle.
From there through beautiful farmland to the dyke crossing over to the next island, except that I ran into the usual navigation problems. All the way from Briellle the path was very well marked with signs for fietsroute #1, however at the critical moment when the path turned right in order to join road N57 and the dyke across the river to the next island, all signs giving directions mysteriously disappeared and I spent certainly at least half an hour trying to find my way through a network of bikepaths with no direction signs. At one stage I was asking directions from the same group of Dutch guys twice.
When I eventually managed to get to the dyke and to the bike path across the river, the SW must have increased to force 6 or 7, and it was slow going. It was also uphill at first, not very much, but steep enough with a force 6 straight in the face. Some very fast bikers were going in the opposite direction; I kept wondering about how and when they planned to get back again. Uphill and against the wind speed was down to 9 km/h occasionally, and even that was hard work.
Made it eventually to the other side and got some protection from the trees and also had the wind from the side for some time and made it to Goedereede. Thought that was a nice name for a possible place to have lunch and parked the bike at Hotel de Gouden Leeuw and asked if the still served lunch.
They were closed. This was at 14:40 and the kitchen was closed until five. Tried my best to look friendly and hungry at the same time (a difficult combination obviously) and there was no interest in opening it up for a simple sandwich for a hungry biker. I moved over to the beer place next door, we had some language problems initially. With a combination of my five words of Dutch and some German they finally realised they had a hungry customer and offered me sausage in bread with bacon, the local delicacy straight from the freezer. Served with orange juice and sparkling water it was delicious, a meal to write home about.
After numerous dank u I moved on, with plans to at least make it at least to the next island and across another dyke. The wind however was truly horrible; I eventually made it to Ouddorp and passed a local VVV office along the road (the tourist office for you non-Dutch readers). I stopped and asked if they had a hotel room available and checked in at Hotel Alvershoek, in the middle of the old town, a few minutes later.
Total distance today a disappointing 58.6 km including the numerous detours. Average speed 16.89 km/h. The weather forecast is that a front will move through tonight with some rain, and the wind will turn to west. For Thursday the forecast is northerly wind! I'll believe it when and if that happens.
The bike still works perfect. Also the bicyclist is fairly happy with the state of things. No major problems after the long ride yesterday, and there may even be signs of improvement.
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