We are currently at sea, the North Sea to be exact, en route to Harwich with heavy mist surrounding us, making visibility limited. This must be the most boring section of the trip but a necessary one in order to get the bikes to England.
Sadly the 'Big Bike Ride' ended this morning when we rode from Delft to Hoek of Holland - a leisurely and pleasant ride through pretty countryside,
with a coffee stop about half way. When we spied a cafe on the other side of the road, we zoomed across only to find it was closed. Then we saw another nearby, with a couple of people sitting at one of the several outside tables, walked over and asked if we could get coffee there, looked inside and saw - not a cafe but a senior citizens' centre with a large number of seniors playing indoor bowls! How embarrassing!!!
A gentleman with very good English appeared....yes, of course we could have coffee, went inside and returned with two cups of coffee and a tin of biscuits. He and another gentleman stayed chatting with us while we drank the coffee and at first refused to allow us to pay but we insisted and paid double the 70cents each.
We arrived at Hoek van Holland in plenty of time
and while waiting to check in treated ourselves to a feed of fish & chips - the Dutch do them very well.
So here we are - still a couple of hours away from England and looking forward to catching up tomorrow with our friends in Somerset.
When we boarded earlier, the odometer showed 1,973kms, we couldn't make it to 2,000kms but that was never the goal - our aim was to ride from Budapest to Hoek van Holland and happily, we achieved that goal. We hadn't considered riding in the UK so haven't done any homework in that regard but having spoken lately to a few people who have ridden there, homework is now on the agenda.
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