Preparation for touring the Netherlands

This post is a sequel to what was posted here back in early February when we were in the planning stage of what for us is to be a great adventure. So, assuming there are such things as 'stages' when it comes to cycling one could say we are now in the 'fitness' stage. This involves going out on as many rides as we can, these getting longer each time so that we get to know, or even improve on, our physical limits. The picture here is us taking a lunch break in Kilberry, a distance of some twenty five kilometres from where we live. (I should also explain that we have gone completely metric as part of our preparation for the trip.) This particular ride taught us some useful lessons; what to wear when the air temperature is only around eight degrees celsius, the speed at which we can put on our waterproof jackets to avoid getting wet when the rain starts; the slowing effect of a headwind; the boost provided by a tailwind; the need to carry snacks with us on the basis that there will be nowhere we can buy food.

Clearly there will be limitations on what we can carry with us on this mad adventure, in terms of both weight and volume. So having compiled detailed lists of things we think we might need it seems sensible to do a trial pack of everything on those lists to make sure they will all fit in our bike panniers. I should stress here that we will be cycle touring, which according to most definitions does not involve camping. We will be sleeping each night on a bed in someone's home or else in a hotel, thus eliminating the need for camping gear of any sort. This leaves us with only carrying the right mixture of warm, dry clothes - likely to take up most of our space - personal items like washing or shaving gear and tools suitable for fixing small things that might go wrong. Given that Holland is a country with more bikes than people we would hope that for any more serious repairs we can rely on finding a good mechanic.

After riding back home from Kilberry along the bumpy single track road we begin to think about tyres. Cars have tyres, of course, and when the need arises cars use service stations with air machines to pump up their tyres. A manually operated pump is rarely used and these days most cars would not carry such a thing.

The big difference with touring in Holland is that we'll be using cycle paths, not roads... Why? Because the country is full of them. We do intend to carry a small manual tyre pump but might it make sense for us to have an electric machine, to make our lives easier? So it is that we make a late decision to invest in yet another gadget which must be fitted in along with our luggage. This is a battery powered air pump and will need charging, just like our phones, but we are also taking a small solar panel with us, something to be lashed on to the back of my bike ready to catch some sunlight. Will this all work? Only time will tell.

As I write we still have several weeks to go before our departure date, still time to fit in a few more training rides. There are some indications that the weather might soon be a little kinder to us but sadly there is not a gadget for this.

Thankfully our experience of Holland (in a sailing boat) tells us that because so few countries in the world speak their language, most Dutch people are familiar with spoken English so communication on a personal level should not be too difficult. However this leaves us with the task of understanding the road signs, especially since these are often abbreviated or converted to symbols to save space. We like to think that a toilet sign is something we could not mistake but a direction sign naming a particular place will mean nothing if we do not know where that place is. There are numbered cycle routes which cover the whole country but if the named destination is unknown to us then these may be of limited use. So rather than rely on trying to make sense of what we don't know we have made preparations for route finding through Holland using technologies contained within a mobile phone which can communicate with satellites so that it knows where it is on the surface of the earth and can also suggest a route to somewhere we might like to go. Without this functionality at least one of our bike panniers would have to be filled with paper maps of the country.

Strangely there are a couple of things we do plan to take, cycle helmets, that are only rarely seen in Holland, only 0.5% of cyclists wearing them. By wearing them ourselves we will stand out as being foreigners but we come from a culture which uses them, almost exclusively. The Dutch feel safe on their bikes. They have the lowest cycling fatality rate per kilometre in the world, largely because their country has made cycling a primary means of transport and gives cyclists priority over all other motorised vehicles. To experience this is one of the main reasons for us going there.

This final planning stage is probably the most stressful of all as we keep asking ourselves what we might have forgotten or what if this or that happens. So how about this one. Should I take a device that will allow me to continue writing this blog? As it happens I do have a tiny fold up keyboard, battery powered, that can connect to my phone using Bluetooth. Surely there is a tiny space somewhere in my panniers for this gadget.

Wildlife

The current popular opinion, if adverts and comments on social media are to be believed, is that a garden is a place that is managed or manicured, from end to end by the occupants of a house. Grass is allowed, or encouraged, to grow, but must be maintained at a certain length by regular trimming. The lawn mower is an essential tool for this, driven by petrol or by electricity (the days of pushing this device around by hand are long gone) and for most gardeners 'cutting the lawn' has become a weekly ritual. Invasive plants like dandelions or buttercups must be ripped out (or chemically poisoned) but the real horror is the dreaded moss. Chemical treatments abound for dealing with this plant no matter where it tries to grow and even if these are not your thing there are pages of guidance for eradicating it before it can overrun the garden. Around the 'lawn' (an area of soil-covered land planted with grass and other durable plants such as clover which are maintained at a short height) the edges must be trimmed neatly so that the growth does not intrude into the 'flower bed' that surrounds it, this being managed for other purposes such as for plants that are allowed (and expected) to produce blooms which can be cut off and displayed within the house.

If you have read this far then you may be thinking that we do not hold with the protocols described above. Yes, we do have a garden, an area of land outside the house, and yes, there is grass growing there in places.

There is also a healthy covering of moss, heather, reeds, daffodils and an assortment of plants I cannot name, scattered about in patches through which random shrubs poke out. Many years ago, before the house was built, the land here would have been forested. We know this because the tree stumps are still dotted about here and there with roots still buried in the soil. The result of this is that even though the trees are long gone the remnants of various forest dwelling plants are always trying to emerge into daylight. We find this fascinating. It is what we might call 'wild' but the important part for us is that is that the garden is largely unmanaged, despite this being totally at odds with the accepted definition of what should be done with a 'garden'. The lawn mower gets very little use. Maybe once a year it comes out of the shed but the uneven ground and the rocks randomly sticking out means it cannot go everywhere so often we simply don't bother.

We were delighted to discover that our unmanaged garden was attracting at least one nightly visitor, here captured on camera taking a stroll, and he has rather generously been leaving his droppings dotted around the garden. We don't complain if occasionally a fragment is stuck to the shoe when we come in from the garden.

These small black parcels do no harm, in fact they will probably add richness to the soil once they crumble away but there are places we would prefer the deer to avoid, like our fruit bush patch. We hope that the 'deer deterrent' fencing we have set up will have the desired effect. This is 'management' at a minimal level.

Other wildlife captured by the camera is somewhat smaller but sadly with such a fleeting glimpse as this we can only speculate on what it is.

Despite that lack of management from us the garden is not totally wild. We have raised beds in which we plant onions and garlic, a polytunnel for the more delicate herbs and for tomato plants to grow in and then there is the vegetable patch for the rhubarb and the potatoes. (Deer do not eat rhubarb.) Management of the whole garden consists of removing bramble shoots before they can get established and then trimming back any growth that seeks to flow over into the cultivated areas. Many would use the term 'weeds' for this and it is likely that most onlookers would use this term for the tall grass stems and the thick bed of moss that covers most of our garden. But a weed is a plant growing where it is unloved and unwanted. Everything growing in our garden is what we enjoy to look at and wander past.