#60 Netherlands North to South

The final phase of my grand European eBiking tour of the the Danube and the Elbe: the last 135-km of the Elbe, crossing the low-lying dairy country of German and Dutch Friesland (Fryslân), a few days in Amsterdam and then back to Maastricht to complete the circle.

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Sunday 19 May 2019.  Hamburg · Cuxhaven |135 km|

But first though, I had to find my way out of Hamburg.   I managed it eventually by heading vaguely west in order to pick up the Elberadweg again, which I was finally able to do only after I was well and truly out of the city proper.  This city riding took me along the Reeperbahn – which is very seedy-looking at 10.00 am on a Sunday morning – and then past several kilometres of very impressive mansions overlooking the Hamburg docks on the other side of the Elbe.

Eventually, the route began to closely follow the right bank of the Elbe again, along a lovely promenade with lots of seaside-type restaurants and ice cream parlours and even some sandy beaches, and with quite a crowd of people out for a Sunday stroll or cycling.

The people around here are friendly, and all the way to Gronigen I got (and gave) the standard greeting “Moin!” when passing by.  By the time the houses of Hamburg had thinned out I noticed there was a terrific-looking campground (at 19.5-km from the townhall) set in amongst the trees and situated right on the river’s edge.  It looked like a nice place to have stayed.

This idyllic path ended rather abruptly though, just a few kilometers past that campground, where the riverside was suddenly blocked by the old Wedel power station site – there is just a sharp right turn straight into an un-rideable 150m ascent up the side of a steep hillside.  Very fortunately for me, a guy out bike-riding with his 2 young sons helped me push my bike up the incline.  Then there was some more urban riding through the town of Schulau, with no marked cycleway anymore, until I found myself on what looked like a dead-end spit of land at the Schulau yacht club.

I happened to spy a group of people walking on top of a levee bank and crossed over some no-man’s land to scale up the side of the levee, and then forced open a jammed gate to get onto their fenced-off walking track.  This indeed did turn out to be the main Radweg again, but I wasn’t sure about that for another 10 km, and with all the sheep-proof gates to open and close every couple of hundred metres or so, I left sure my foray onto the levee was about to end in another dead-end at any moment.  In fact it was full on gate-sheep-gate-sheep-gate for the next 25 km all the way to Glückstadt, but after 10-or-so km I caught up to another cyclist going my way who convinced me that google maps said we were on the right track, and so I pushed on.

He also casually mentioned that there were two swing-bridges ahead that we had to cross before they swung into the river-traffic-open position at 1pm – that was in 10 minutes time, and 3 km away.  I took off like a hare (he wasn’t bothered even trying) and pedalled furiously, but the 6 more intervening sheep gates took their toll and I arrived at the bridge 2 minutes too late.

But the sign on the bridge said it would only be blocked off for one hour and so I used the time wisely and unpacked my tent and spread it out to dry on the asphalt.

The number of us waiting cyclists on both sides began to mount up as the hour drew nigh, and sure enough promptly at 2 o’clock the bridge driver in his airconditioned control tower smugly swung the bridge closed again and us waiting cohort roared off – as far as the next sheep gate, which was about 20 metres.  Now it was sheep, sheep shit and sheep gates for another 20 km.  Why they can’t just install sheep-grids like in Australia, I don’t know. [In fact, later, on the other side of the Elbe, they did have grids for the sheep. Are they dumber sheep on the Cuxhaven side, maybe?].

The final Elbe ferry crossing, at Glückstadt, takes half an hour, and it’s a big ferry that takes 20 cars. There was a 2-hour queue of vehicles waiting to get on, but on the bike I was allowed to go straight to the head of the queue and board immediately. There were only two other cyclists on the ferry, Claudius and Anya. I got chatting to Anya first, then they both invited me to stay for a night at their home in Cuxhaven. They’d left their car on the Cuxhaven side and ridden their bikes up to her mom’s place 75 km away.

So Arnya loaded her bike and my luggage into their wagon while Claudius and I rode together the 80 km back to their house.  Not having the luggage onboard made a huge difference to the bike’s range, and I got 240 km that day, instead of the usual 140-160.  This got me thinking that toting so much luggage around is maybe not such a good idea.  Without camping, I could shed easily 10-12 kilos –  that is, I could almost halve the weight I am now carrying.

Claudius and Anya’s son, Finn, 17, joined us for a BBQ dinner and then it was pretty early to bed in their spare room off the garage.  Claudius had kept up a punishing pace on his racing bike, and I was tired out.

Monday 20 May 2019.  Cuxhaven · Leer |161 km|

It was very foggy when I left Claudius and Anya’s house on the southern outskirts of Cuxhaven at 7.15 am.  This was an inland route direct to Gronigen, and I never did see the North Sea again after sitting on the beach drinking a beer with Claudius at Badestrand just before Cuxhaven (though it is officially still the estuary of the Elbe River there anyway).  I couldn’t find a recognised long-distance bicycle path to follow that went in my direction, though the bike signs were plastered with all sorts of local routes (see opposite), and I rode mainly on quiet country roads.

The villages strung out along my route stank of cow shit and there were absolutely no shops to be seen all along, so my iced coffee fix went un-sated.  Bremerhaven is a big city and quite unattractive too, and even though Claudius and Anya had recommended it worth a close look, I didn’t stay long. Also, I neglected to cross the Weser River on the ferry at Bremerhaven, as vehemently instructed to by Ziggy, (because it just didn’t “seem” right), but finally concluded I should have, and crossed at Sandstedt instead, 25 km South of Bremerhaven, without incurring too much extra mileage penalty.  All sorts of weird cycle route marker tabs kept creeping on to the signs now, as seen in the picture box to the left.  No idea what those 4 were!

The route was fairly directly west now, taking in Sandstedt, Jade (“Ya-der”) and Westerstede, which are all attractive and well-heeled towns, as too is Leer, the biggest (30,000 population) and best of the lot, and that seems to be some kind of pleasure craft tourist mecca.  I didn’t need a charge-up all day – it had of course been flat, and there was little wind – but only barely scraped into the Leer Marina Campground on the last dregs of remaining battery power.

The campground was poorly run and a bit decrepit, but scrupulously clean.  The on-site restaurant was Texas-themed, which I found a bit of a turn-off, and the food wholesome, I guess, but overpriced and uninviting.  Still, The Texas Tavern was doing a roaring trade on a Monday evening (and not from the ‘captive’ clientele of campers or caravanners either – the campground was almost deserted), so they must have got something right to be able to entice so many customers out from the busy tourist town centre, over 8 km away, on a Monday night.

Tuesday 21 May 2019.  Leer · Meppel |166 km|

Rain threatened as I was leaving the Leer campground at 7.30am, and I weathered up for it, but it held off all day and by 2pm I was feeling a tad overdressed, sweating away underneath raincoat and over-trousers.  About 20 km from Leer I must have crossed the border from Germany into Netherlands, near Bad Nieweschans, not that you would ever know it except that the street signs suddenly appeared in Dutch, and the fact there were more shops, and they sold iced coffee.  Yay!

The more sombre and impoverished style of German farm house now gave way to rather grandiose Dutch versions.  Except that the cows were now kept mostly in barns that are attached to the main house, which seems like a rather over-cosy relationship to me.

I didn’t do at all well on battery management today, as the wind had shifted overnight to a westerly and was now directly in my face and quite strong.

Gronigen is held to be a bit of a cycling mecca and was my Valhalla destination for the past few days that spurred me on with my fatiguing legs (and a mighty sore arse). However, although an attractive town, it did turn out to be a disappointment on the biking front.  Sure, okay, but nothing special.  The ignoramuses at the Tourist Information Centre couldn’t even enlighten me on any special features to do with cycling, such as the famous bike bridges I’d heard about.

But I badly needed to recharge the batteries, and I did so for 2½ hours at the free public plug-in point outside the Media Markt electronics mega-store.

A good thing, too – because I got chatting to a nice gentleman and his wife who informed me that my intended route across the Afsluitdijk , that 32 km major causeway across the North Sea that keeps a large part of the Netherlands dry, is now closed to cyclists.  And it has been for more than a year, so I guess I didnt do my research very well.  Not only had I been looking forward to riding across this arm of the sea, but it lead to Alkmaar, from where I might catch a train directly to Maastricht (in order to go to Aachen to get a new rear pannier rack).

I now had to track due south of Gronigen to go round the southern side of the Ijsselmeer lake formed by the dyke, instead of continue west to go round the seaward side.  So I changed my plan to go directly to Amsterdam instead.  This meant I could either head for Zwolle or for Kampen, and I arbitrarily chose Kampen.  And I’m glad I did too because it’s a really nice town.

But I didn’t make it to Kampen this day, and it was already late enough when I arrived at Meppel – not that Meppel was ever a destination I had in mind – and I took the easy option again of a room in a cheap hotel downtown opposite the railway station.  It was a rip-off, really, the Hotel De Poort van Drenthe at €67, but Henk looked like he needed a customer almost as badly as I needed the room.  Dinner, across the street at Henk’s café run by his wife, was even more of a rip-off, with only plain cheese and ham toasties and small draft beers on offer at €5 a pop.  Two of each, please!

Wednesday 22 May 2019.  Meppel · Amsterdam |130 km|

What with Henk fussing about and not locking the external bike garage across the street next to his café until I asked him 3 times, I forgot to bring the bike batteries in and charge them overnight (yes, I’m blaming him!) and so had to sit around waiting for them to charge for 3 hours until 10.15 in the morning, when I judged there may have been enough juice in them to get me to Amsterdam (85% full).  [Well I did get there, but only just, and had to bust my gut in ECO mode against head winds most of the way to do it.  Never again!]

I still had 20km of non-descript bike path along an abandoned canal to negotiate.  At least it was protected from the wind.

I rolled into Amsterdam just in time to enjoy the cut and thrust of combat with 100,000 Dutch cyclists scurrying home at knock-off time.  I think I handled it well.  Instinctively, you could say.

But accommodation was scarce, especially since I wanted a bike garage, and it took me quite a while before I managed to find a room at the Melrose Hotel on one of the quieter canals for the night, before shifting to the more central “City Hotel Amsterdam” for 3 nights, itself a bit off the beaten track but close to the Central Railway Station (but on the ‘wrong’ side).  I’ve stayed in tents bigger than my €100 per night room, but, well, I kind of like living in the basement of a dingy 3-star hotel. Actually, this hotel used to be the home of Holland’s most famous sea Admiral, Michiel De Ruyter (1607-1676),  so let’s just say I slept in a famous cellar.

Some photos of canals…

and buildings ….

all the while marvelling at the lack of drunks floating in the water…

….and watching the passing throng while chugging on a large jug of lager or two…

I stayed 4 nights in Amsterdam – from the Wednesday afternoon until Sunday morning – and could have happily stayed a lot longer.  I got to see the effect thousands of  Brits out for a dirty weekend, and both young and old, have on the economy, which is considerable.  But I still needed to get my bike to Aachen in order to get the rear pannier rack replaced (for the 3rd time: hopefully, some design improvements might it last this time!).

It turned out to be quite a saga getting to Maastricht by train on Sunday.  The trains were cancelled between Eindhoven and Roermond for scheduled track maintenance, I was told, and so I only bought a ticket as far as Eindhoven.   But the train I got on at Amsterdam terminated at Utrecht because of a failure of the overhead electrical gantry further on.

I had been chatting to a retired Dutch guy, Klaus, who was going on a 6-day cycling/ camping trip with 4 of his mates who he was meeting at Eindhoven (they’ve been doing it every year for 44 years), and Klaus interpreted for me what all the station announcements were saying.  Firstly, we were told it would be a 1-hour delay, so we waited, but then 20 minutes later we were told 5 hours minimum.  By this time, his 4 mates had shown up in Utrecht, having caught a later train.  Their collective decision was to go by train all the way back to Rotterdam instead, and thence to Eindhoven via Tilberg and Breda (thus crisscrossing the whole of The Netherlands 3 times in all!).

I decided to tag along and we all did get to Eindhoven in the end – at 3.15 pm, a good 4 hours late for that leg of the journey.  Then I had to cycle the 60 km to Roermond to bypass the original maintenance closure, and catch another train on to Maastricht.

Sunday 26 May 2019. Eindhoven · Roermond |66 km|

There are good cycle paths all the way from Eindhoven to Roermond.  In fact there are many to choose from.  I let Ziggy do it, and he kindly thought some of the more minor ones might be more interesting.  At least they went more-or-less in the right direction.

Most of the time I was on an excellent path, but one that is located right next to the very busy N266 and N280 roads, so it wasn’t all that interesting.

I arrived with ½ an hour to spare for the 6.30 train out of Roermond.  Unfortunately, though, I got to the station just as the ticket office was closing at 6.00 pm and they refused to serve me.

This was a problem because the ticketing machine doesn’t take cash and it wouldn’t accept my Visa card either (some do, some don’t – this one didn’t).  I explained my situation to a uniformed railway person on the platform, and after helping me to try the machine once again, she told me not to worry, she would speak to the train conductor about it.

Well, it turned out she was the conductor on that train.  I got on the last carriage, which was the bike carriage, and she never came anywhere near me.  I was a bit worried getting off at Maastricht because you sometimes have to go through a ticket barrier, but they were open as they usually are, and I was just left with a quick and easy ride to Molly and Kathleen’s house.

I had received the call from Velo bike shop in Aachen that another new replacement rear pannier rack was ready in-store to replace the second broken one, (but then I had to pressure them a bit to squeeze me into their workshop schedule).

Velo are definitely getting tired of this recurring problem and there was some mention/ threat about the bike’s warranty period being nearly at an end, so this is the last support I’ll be getting.  I certainly got a very frosty reception when I got there, and I have no qualms about mentioning this here publicly.

Velo made a big deal about the rack’s design having been modified by trhe manufacturer to solve the issue of it cracking across the flat weld where the rack struts meet the back-stay, by angling the weld to create a bigger weld surface, and I agree this modification is a good idea.

But they (that is, R&M, if they got my  message via Velo, and Velo if they didn’t pass my message on) ignored my suggestion to modify the top bracket as well, where the front of the rack attaches to the ABUS lock holder.  In my opinion this is the area of main concern, design-wise.  All the weight on the rack is pushing forward onto a base-plate that is held in place by four stainless steel screws threaded into the soft aluminium plate that takes all the stress, which is a really stupid idea.   I subsequently made this simple modification myself of replacing the tapped screws with bolts that go all the way through the aluminium base plate and are held there by lock nuts.  We’ll see how it goes. [ed. Exactly the same thing happened with my almost identical eBike in Australia and I successfully made the same modification on that one too].

-ends-

#60. Europe Hamburg to Amsterdam , 492 km, then another 66km of riding to Maastricht | 558 km|

 

Europe 2019.  The big rivers circuit:  Maastricht/ Bratislava/ Hamburg/ Maastricht |3,470 km|

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