As the start of our holiday adventure in Holland approaches we feel the urge to prepare our bodies as best we can when a day of sunshine beckons. An air temperature barely above our agreed cycling minimum, eight degrees C, is enough to coax us onto our bikes for a training ride.
We bring the bikes inside for a good clean then drive with them to Ardrishaig. We unload, batteries are attached, helmets fixed on our heads and off we go, crossing the main road to rise up to the Crinan Canal towpath. We have some sandwiches with us plus something to drink and we know from doing this ride previously that by following the canal towpath we will not be faced with anything resembling a hill. Better still, the wind is blowing from behind us so riding is effortless, no electric power is needed as our bikes are light enough to pedal easily on the flat. We are hardly out of breath.
When we are close to Crinan at the end of the canal the towpath is closed due to repairs to fix a breach in the canal itself but a short detour on the road takes us into the village where there is a snack bar waiting for us and we can refresh ourselves with coffee and a piece of cake. Here we meet another cyclist who is clearly contemplating going down the electric bike route and we chat with him on the merits of our machines. After we leave, another diversion tempts us to ride up to the Beaver Centre, located beside a small loch above the canal. Beavers were released here some years ago and they are now a tourist attraction for those brave enough to risk the loch side path in the dark when the animals emerge. We are not there to observe them, however, merely to learn more about them and eat our sandwiches for lunch. The ride back along the canal to Ardrishaig is upwind (of course) and by the time we arrive back we are grateful that cycling is done for the day. Distance run: Maybe a little over twenty miles.
For our next training ride we decide to attempt the 'West Loch Lomond Cycle Path' which runs between a busy main road and the loch for a large part of its length. We soon discover that this path is poorly maintained and only casually signposted. The broken surface of the first section is very close to the road and we swerve about dangerously to avoid the stones, the soft muddy bits and the rubbish that is strewn everywhere. Sadly from here on nothing changes and after riding some 15 miles we give up and return to the start. How on earth this can be promoted as a safe route for cyclists is hard to understand and by the time we arrive back at our start my rear tyre has been punctured by riding over a sharp piece of rubbish. Distance: around thirty miles of horrible riding.
After a day's rest we find ourselves riding again, this time a local run to Kilberry, a village some fifteen miles away from home along a single coastal track road.
This is a ride we have done before so we know what to expect in terms of hills, some of which are quite vicious. It is a quiet road and thankfully most of the car drivers we meet are kind enough to wait for us at one of the many passing places along the way. The road surface is far from perfect but after our recent Loch Lomond experience this is nothing we can't cope with. Our only disappointment is that the roadside 'Cake Shed' we pass on the way back is empty - baking normally taking place on a Friday.
As I write this we have just a few days to go before our departure yet strangely we seem to have a lot of things planned right up to the last day. Just two days before we leave is the Kintyre Ultra, a marathon running event in which competitors tackle a route which takes them through some of the wildest parts of the Kintyre peninsula and which for the past few years we have assisted by manning one of the check points.
This time we were at Grianain, just north of the village of Carradale, where we were on duty with plenty of fresh drinking water and snacks for those who needed it. For us it is simply a matter of checking the competitors as they come through and topping up the bottles of those who wanted it but was also a day that took our minds off the process of packing our bike panniers and other bags with all our life's needs for the foreseeable future.
At least the 'getting to the station' part of our grand tour is nicely arranged. We have a friend whose car can carry our bikes and our luggage in exchange for which we are 'babysitting' by picking up her children from school on a day when she is working. Our train tickets are now all booked, the ferry crossing being organised months ago, so for the first time we can focus upon where we will be staying for our first and then subsequent nights in Holland.
Here is how it works.
With a map of Holland in front of us we start by estimating how far we can cycle on the first day after we disembark from the ferry at around nine in the morning. We have the experience of last year's grand tour behind us so we are fairly confident of being able to ride some thirty or forty kilometres in a day, stretching this out with rests and lunch stops so as to arrive at our destination towards the end of the day. From the ferry terminal in Ijmuiden we will ride south, along the coast, which puts the town of Noordwijk within reach. Next we fire up the Vrienden op de Fiets website and load the map page to see what is on offer. We randomly choose one address, a vrienden member's house which might be available for that day, and send off an email, introducing ourselves as fellow members of this amazing community. We are thrilled and delighted to receive a reply just fifteen minutes later saying we are welcome and giving us a suggested arrival time. It does not always happen this quickly but this is the process we shall be following all the way across Holland, making bookings one day at a time just a few days ahead.
'Bikepacking' seems to be a term used by touring cyclists who camp out overnight. We use it to describe the process of carefully squeezing all our belongings into our panniers, checking off each item from the long lists we have been building up.
We set aside a full day for this process then finally the day of our departure arrived and we stuffed everything into our friend's car for the journey to Arrochar, our nearest rail station. Here we had booked a night in a hotel so we could take an early train the next day, a hotel with luxury bike accomodation, as it turned out.
No comments:
Post a Comment