Ewan's Cycling Blog

This final post of the trip will have multiple sections. One the traditional travelogue of the day and the rest on gear, clothing, kit, route etc. The day Due to some weird interaction between the Vodafone Maritime service, timezone changes and Apple's alarm app, we woke up at 4:30am. Two hours before disembarkation... This was not a great start to the day. The ferry had already docked and we stared at the trucks unloading in the early dawn light our of our giant porthole window. There were hundreds of trucks and, watching them driving off, one gets an insight into how much cross-border trade and transport goes on "under the hood" of economies. If only the Tory party had realised how much of this goes on day after day after day before they threw a giant bag of Brexit sand into the gears of the economy. But you're not here for the economic commentary. "Tell us more about the biking stuff Dr K", "Were there any gravel fac...

Top marks to the Eye Hotel (named after the famous British R&B covers band) for a quiet room amid the Utrecht freshers party central scene. We enjoyed another fabulous Dutch breakfast spread and then headed out on the road. Today was just over 100km to Hoek van Holland and we had a lot of time to get there. Leaving at 9am meant we would get there around 2pm and have four and a half hours to wait for the ferry. So we dawdled. Endless perfect cycling infrastructure. The Netherlands are an absolute joy to cycle in. I’ve gone on and on about how great the cycling infrastructure is in cities and in the countryside and I’m going to go on and on about it a little bit more. Cycling is embedded in the country in a way that we could only dream of in the UK. From signage to just how many types of cyclists there are, it’s eye opening. We live in Cambridge which has the highest density of cycling per head of population in the UK and it’s nothing compared to wa...

Today was going to be a bit of a shorter day but, in an ironic twist, we were going to be worrying more about the heat than the cold and the rain. Despite the Boutique Church hotel being very boutiquey, we slept well and were presented with an wonderful Dutch breakfast spread in the morning. Breakfasts are a non existent feature of my normal life but a huge feature of these long distance cycle trips. I’m pretty sure the audience for this blog is getting a little cheesed-off with endless pictures of baked goods and ham. Great coffee, great breakfast. Well done Boutique Church hotel. Straight out of the door we were on to the frankly stupendous Dutch cycling infrastructure. Basically the entire country looks like this. There wasn’t a time between Arnhem and Utrecht that we weren’t on segregated cycle paths or roads. It was…blissful. I’m going to try to cut down on the endless shots of brilliant cycling infrastructure and also the photos of lovely...

This was a long but great day. More bridges, the second last border, great weather, fabulous cycling infrastucture. Long distance cycling doesn’t really get better than this. The Mercure in Duisburg was absolutely fine. Everything worked apart from a rickety old lift and the breakfast was pure four-star-hotel-breakfast-kit. Early morning in Duisburg. Unsurprisingly given it was 8am on a Sunday morning, the streets were quiet and easy to traverse. Duisburg is a very…neat…place. Nice roads, tidy little apartment blocks and big wide shopping streets. Of course, this is due to the fact that it has been rebuilt from scratch. Sitting as it does at the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr, it was a prime engineering and manufacturing hub for Germany and thus was a prime target for Allied bombing. Over 80% of the entire city was reduced to rubble To put that in perspective, after the Hiroshima nuclear bombing, it was estimated that 70...