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The Netherlands


Morning at sea. On the left, I can just make out some buildings. The selection of fruit at breakfast is quite melon-heavy. A sign for my intended route to Rotterdam, seen from the ship. Some of the cyclists have found an extra passport checking lane which wasn't indicated by the signs. The town of Hoek van Holland. A persistent theme of today would be sheep grazing on little scraps of land which had no other use. At least two more ships approaching the port. The orange ship belongs to a company called DYT Yacht Transport. It's used for transporting small ya... That sign makes the danger pretty clear. The white lattice structure is the flood barrier. I showed ... A view. Looking towards Rotterdam. Pennsylvania Dutch? The railway line from Hoek van Holland to Rotterdam has recently been converted from a normal railwa... One of a group of slightly unusual blocks of flats. This town is Maassluis. The lower markings are all historical flood levels, with the 1953 flood which was ... Isn't it Dutch? This channel of the Rhein estuary is about the same width as the whole river is in the Cologne area ... A pumping station. It looks like this is were they grow hazard warning tape. I don't think I've got the pose quite right. Part of my route into Rotterdam. Chimneys. A cat lying in a window. Schiedam. There aren't many people about. Rotterdam. An old tram doing tours of the city. Rotterdam. A popular yoga session, with instructions in just English. I think the cranes are floodlights. The black panel has a diagram of one of them and some buttons. I... A sculpture. Rotterdam. Rotterdam. The first Dutch flag that I've seen, and it's a big one. Rotterdam. There is a ditch along the side of the road. Some of the houses have very fancy bridges over it. At the moment, I'm on a very quiet peaceful road with ditches on both sides... ... and ducks... ... which is why I was surprised when I turned round and found that I was this close to fast food ou... Storks. A chick of some kind of water bird. A new thatched roof. Here, they have put some old level crossing gates on display on a roundabout. Beware... ... swans! Moordrecht. I like the wiggly path between the trees. Moordrecht. Another crazy golf course. This useful sign shows that the first bridge is currently open for boats, and therefore closed to ro... I fancy a rest so I'm going to wait for this one to come back down. Just a view. The spire in Gouda looks a bit like an N1 rocket. This elevated road does allow cars and some of them travel surprisingly fast. It doesn't feel as saf... One of several places along this road with trampolines embedded in the ground. Fields of cows. Oudewater. I saw two benches like this in Oudewater. They seem to be having trouble turning their boat around. Oudewater. Oudewater. Oudewater. Not the only place in the town with a painting on the outside. I didn't see an explanation. Oudewater. Oudewater. Statues washing their hair. Pigs. A man going the other way laughed and said something as he went past. The only word I recognis... 13 years ago, I found the most amazing machine here. I had booked a hotel in Utrecht by phone but di... A two year old bridge for cyclists over the Amsterdam-Rhein canal. A cycle lane along the canal. A pleasure cruiser, which looks like it has cabins on board. That boat looks very low in the water. A smaller boat. A giant coin in the pavement. I can see my hotel aove the trees. I've only come 95 km, on flat ground with a favourable wind, but ... There are some houseboats on the right. With my hotel being near the station, I was wondering whether I would have to park in one of the gia... This is the fourth night on this trip but the first time I have had a shower large enough to raise b... I put my laptop on charge straight away and was then gathering together all the other devices which ... I get a view of trains from my window. The hotel is very modern. For instance, there is a light under the bed which comes on if anything mo... This year's trip is just an aimless wander so I have no objection to using lifts. I may well use sev... Utrecht. The entire ground floor of the mosque appears to be a kebab restaurant. I am looking for dinner sugg... Utrecht. Road junctions in Dutch cities take up a lot of space. Oh. I've just realised that I've brought two pairs of waterproof trousers on this trip. That wasn't ... Utrecht. No parking of bikes here. I don't know what's happening in there but it's popular. Utrecht. Utrecht. As a cyclist, you get a lovely clear route. Railway lines in Utrecht. The cycle lane on a major road. A big block of flats with green panelling to help it blend into the trees. A minor road junction. At the other end of the village was a sculpture of a deer in the same style. I've taken a diversion into the village of Austerlitz because I thought it might be interesting. The... A little way outside Austerlitz is this pyramid which Napoleon's army built just so that they had so... The top of the pyramid. Scherpenzeel. A very small horse. Pretty houses. The nearest one is dated 1779 and the next one is 1775. Chickens. The cycle path connecting those houses to a supermarket on the other side of the main road. A purple field. This is where British and Polish paratroopers landed in 1944 to try to secure the bridge over the ri... A donkey coming to see me. A communications tower. Arnhem, with its station in the foreground. Arnhem. Arnhem. Arnhem. Bike parking. Anamorphic pavement art. Arnhem. Arnhem. The shopping area. There is an arcade running straight away from me throught the "Musiskwartier" building. The same place but with people and sunshine. Arnhem. Arnhem. Arnhem. I got a phone call this morning from an Arnhem number and initially assumed that it would be somebod... Arnhem. The spire is on my hotel. I've come back to this park to put some more air into my back tyre and the try to lubricate the fron... I went to where I thought the door of the hotel would be, under the spire. The doors there looked li... I'll show you some more pictures of the building later but for now, this is the view from the window... ... and looking up. The headboard and bedside tables look very much like an old pew from the church. The pointless thing... The view looking into the bathroom. It's not a big room but it's certainly quirky. Even the fire escape plan is unusual. The rooms are in glass boxes which have been constructed in the upper part of the nave of the church... Over the years, other buildings have grown up around the church so that now very little of it can be... The original roof must have quite a serious leak. When I was shown to my room, there were coffee mak... The organ. On the right of this picture, you can see the ends of the boxes containing the bedrooms. Pipes and cables going to the bedroom boxes. This morning's hotel had a glass lift. Here, this is how you get up to the rooms. An aisle running along the side of the church downstairs. I'm quite glad that I mistakenly went round to the other side of the block before parking my bike. T... A little statue on top of a signpost. This seems to somehow be a gay pedestrian crossing. The red and green lights each have two figures h... Well, it's not McDonalds. The screen on the left shows the status of my order as "Being Freshly... Back at the hotel. This is what it looks like downstairs. It's a weird place. The front door is in a dark porch with no lighting but in here, all the lights a... My breakfast table, in the stalls behind where the altar used to be. The waiter, who is possibly also the owner, found me looking slightly lost and asked where I wanted ... It looks like that blue cushion dates from when this was a church but I don't really understand how ... The reason why I had come up to this end of the room was because I thought that brightly-lit area wa... Breakfast. What are they doing to that lamb? Those two cyclists sounded Italian. They must have trolleybuses in Arnhem. I didn't notice any. The big building here is the fire statio... The bank of the River IJssel. Westervoort bridge. We always need a picture of a place which sells tractors. This place has toy ones too. I like the elephant logo. The pole with the ring around it is something that I associate with Germany, which isn't far from he... A statue in Loil. I passed one of these yesterday too, possibly the same one. I didn't get a clear look at what was go... I don't know what made that hill. It doesn't look natural. It's now a golf course. Doetinchem. I stopped here for a while to see if the rain stopped. It softened slightly so I started moving agai... Varsseveld. The orange bollards have pictures of things like glasses of beer and wine on them. There... In Aalten. There must be some building work going on in the upstairs room. Rather than putting a ski... Winterswijk, my destination town, where it is still raining. This is the only photograph that I will... This square is called the Market but it doesn't look like it would be easy to actually hold a market... According the to plaque underneath, these are the main characters from a series of stories. The orange building is my hotel. The town's main church is obviously undergoing renovation. A sign o... Piet Mondrian lived in Winterswijk from age 8 to 20. The two rubbish bins in this picture are in his... The wall outside this pub almost is too but they have given some of the lines a slight slant so that... Winterswijk. When I arrived at the hotel, the man on reception noticed how wet I was and suggested that I should ... I saw flags like this quite a lot yesterday afternoon. I thought perhaps it was the flag of the prov... A rural brick road. I think the narrow strip is the bike lane. The view from a wrong road which I took by mistake. You can tell that's Germany over there because the Netherlands doesn't have many wind turbines. The German border. This is one of the old stones marking the border.