Day Four - Riverside (Let's Go)

 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 first one they saw.  The other 9 of us cooperated and found a suitable venue just outside Amsterdam (as are most places in Holland as far as I can tell.)  The area did not look great but luckily the car's off road ability meant I could park in a spot where we could keep an eye on the bikes.

some off road driving yesterday

Before catching the boat we made our way to a town close to the ferry terminal.  Thanks to some expert navigation by Dan we also got to see the majority of the rest of the country.  This detour left us with less than four minutes in the town which, as luck would have it, was exactly enough.  The main thing I saw that was impressive was beer being delivered by a tanker directly to a bar, something I will certainly be investigating for my new house.

The boat crossing was as exciting as a 7 hour crossing can be, which is to say not very.  Jason had hired a cabin to take a nap and was kind enough to lend it to me when he had finished so I did manage to sleep for a small part of the trip.  I started with great ambitions of sleeping on the top bunk then realised I would be stuck there for ever thanks to my post cycling muscle aches.  The rest of the group were involved in a card school which seemed to involve Andy making up rules and winning every round.  Others passed the time in a different way.

Chris resting his eyes

On landing at Harwich we were all in a hurry to get home, which is why it was particularly annoying to pick the slowest customs queue ever.  We were then nearly denied entry to the UK thanks to one of my passengers whose name I can't spell (so not Dan) passing wind in a way that was rather disrespectful to the boarder force employee who was checking our passports.  We are lucky not to be in prison.

I had decided to stay in Cambourne as I had work the next morning so checked into the fashionable Belfry hotel.  Not really worthy of mention, other than the breakfast meats were in fact inferior to the Dutch offerings, which is to say terrible.

The following day we started to see some media reports of the bike ride from the Dutch press.  This article in particular highlighting how stupid my friends are for not dropping out when they had the chance, but also making the fact they didn't drop out more impressive.

Apologies today's blog wasn't that exciting, but I think I have done OK to put so much colour into what was essentially a day of driving / sitting around talking rot.