Big Ben's Travelogue Blog

 Today is the final day of the trip to Holland and is mainly taken up with driving from the hotel to the ferry then sitting on the ferry for hours.  The group met at around 08:00 for a hearty Dutch breakfast made up of various cooked meats that were not quite as good as they would have been in a British hotel and a selection of breads and cheeses that were much better.   To make it in time for the ferry we left at around 09:00 with a plan to stop en-route for souvenir fridge magnets.  The journey went smoothly which was helped by perfect weather conditions which would have been ideal for cycling.  An early highlight of the drive was passing a harbour with some truly impressive ships, we captured a photo for Andy the team boat spotter: boat porn Around an hour after breakfast the team WhatsApp group started chirping with messages suggesting a stop for a McDonald's milkshake, this was seen as a good idea by everyone, in the case of Francoise and Kevin so good that they stopped at the

The 2011 Range Rover Vogue is one of the world’s most revered luxury cars.   They boast a litany of standard equipment designed to cosset driver and passengers alike.   Owners include TV’s Jeremy Clarkson, HM the Queen and me (the rumour is the Queen’s example is somewhat nicer than mine, the recent Jubilee bank holiday weekend giving her the opportunity to replace a knocking anti roll bar link and change the air filter).   The standout feature of the car, or any of the other similar cars we took on the trip is not the electric windows or heated seats but the standard fit waterproof roof.   More of which later. Lovely day for the outdoors Today is the day of the cycle tour, the reason we had come to Holland and for many participants the culmination of many months of gruelling training ahead of the 240km endurance event.   As part of this training some  of the team appear to have read a book suggesting the best preparation for such an event was to minimise sleep as far as possible, it

 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the next in my somewhat infrequent series of travel blogs.  This time I am on a trip to the Netherlands to do some cycling.   Day one started at home with the family in Northampton and a trip out to a cafe for breakfast, nothing noteworthy about that except the breakfast venue was also the place where Jeyes fluid was invented so we knew that that if anyone dropped a sausage the 5 second rule could easily be extended to 10. Leaving a tearful family behind I set off for Cambourne to meet my usual cycling companions to set off for Holland and the Eleven Cities cycle tour .  For those that could not be bothered to click on the link, the eleven cities is an annual event which has run since 1912.  The event sees up to 15,000 cyclists ride 235km around 11 cities in the North West of Holland.  This year the Bullrush Bike Club (and me) would be among their number. Following a pasta dinner prepared by Dan we met the others and formed a convoy to Harwich an