day 03


Today's ride:

And the ride so far:

We've so far been pretty lazy with the route-planning and put in either the destination or the destination plus one waypoiint to keep it vaguely close to the official route, but I think we'll need to get stricter and insert more waypoints for future days, otherwise we appear to be in danger of running out of Netherlands before the end of the holiday.

The guesthouse turned out to be a bargain €56 each including dinner, wine and port. We were, though, now low on cash, so headed to the only shop in the village, where we were told we could buy something small and get cashback. The machine didn't, however, believe in British cards. I called my bank to double-check and they said it hadn't gotten as far as asking for authorisation.

Today's route didn't involve any forest and was quite a bit more urban. Shortly after setting off, we encountered a very steep hill.

After waiting patiently for them to lower it, we realised the GPS was turning us right immediately before the bridge.

We were essentially following the river again, though with less scenery to start with.

Parts of it were prettier.

Including the bridges.

But those bricks were out and about in force today.

20-inch wheels and a triple track are not ideal on brick surfaces. The suspension meant that I was reasonably comfortable, but the fairing and mudguards weren't, so I had to cycle a lot of it at about 7mph to prevent the trike shaking itself to pieces.

But we were in no hurry today.

The GPS wanted us to cross the river to the cycle path on the other side. I could see no particular reason for this, and as there was tarmac ahead, ignored it.

We were still capturing material for the industrial estate guidebook.

The reason for the GPS wanting us to cross the water became apparent a mile or so further on, when our path turned sharp right away from the river and some scrolling and zooming revealed that there was no other way back across it for some distance. I always forget that about the Netherlands.

We opted for a policy of ignoring the GPS if it merely wanted us on the other side of a road, but believing it if it told us to cross water. So, one U-turn later ...

The river-side area had what looked light some light industrial units, but a few of them seemingly with attached homes. Makes for a convenient commute.

The surface on the correct side of the river was more of that damned brick. I decided to try the pavement for a while, which was better but didn't last long.

Some while later, it was back to tarmac.

We started hitting traffic lights on the cycle path, but when you pressed the request button most changed to green almost instantly.

Passing through a small town, Eric's cake-detector went off.

It wasn't very precise, so I accosted a woman who spoke no English but gave us extremely comprehensive directions to a cake shop - in Dutch. About 500 words of Dutch. I understood the words links and rechts (and those only because they are the same as German). This appeared to be sufficient.

The cake selection was amazing. This was just one of several cabinets.

We were being healthy. Eric had an apple and I had a banana.

I had to take a photo of this for Esther.

The next major town en-route was Hengelo. Eric's GPS had seemingly had a traumatic experience there once as it refused to go anywhere near the place.

We opted to follow mine toward the guesthouse until we got to the outskirts, at which point we hoped Eric's would be happy that we were safely past Hengelo and route us to the shopping centre where we'd find both the Apple reseller and MediaMarkt.

The rest of the route was essentially alongside main-ish roads.

This was a Glaxo building of some kind.

At one point, my GPS got confused and directed us on a little detour. Possibly a pedestrian-only one, but we didn't spot any pedestrians and it was very pretty.

If this were a British underpass, that would be grafitt; here it's a tile mosaic.

Hengelo was pretty, and for anyone else heading this way, it looked like a good spot for lunch.

And the final stretch towards Enschede.

This building was somewhat reminiscent of the Ark beside the elevated section of the M4.

We found the shopping centre and locked the two bikes together. I had one dry-sac for all my technology, to which I added my passport and return ferry reference, so that if we ever had to leave the bikes out of sight, taking that one bag with me would mean everything of value would be with me (aside from the trike itself, of course).

We found the shopping centre and went to the Apple reseller where I successfully purchased the Magsafe 1 --> 2 converter. It wasn't quite an Apple Store, but hey, escaping an Apple temple having spent only €10 is pretty impressive, you have to admit!

The guesthouse we were heading for claimed to have wifi in the public areas but only wired Internet in the rooms. A Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet adapter was €30, and I figured that was a bit excessive for one evening of Orange is the New Black.

However, wandering into MediaMarkt just because, I then reasoned that you never know when it might come in handy, and sod's law said that if I didn't buy it, we'd end up staying in a succession of places with only wired net access. So I thought "sod it" and bought it.

But still, I want it officially recorded that two gadget-fiends visited two electronics stores and spent only €40 total. To be frank, I'm expecting some kind of official recognition for this achievement.

We parked ourselves in a cafe for a while to do some gadgetising, then cycled the final mile to the guesthouse, which was an ordinary terraced house on a little backstreet just outside the town centre. Inside, it was lovely.

First things first.

Not under cover, but safely behind a locked gate.

We had the place to ourselves, and each had one floor to ourselves too. As well as a large bedroom, I had a living/dining room ...

And, even better, a bathroom with a huge bath!

We also had a kitchen area, which is where we'd have breakfast prepared for us in the morning.

We'd scouted out a couple of restaurants on the way, and I also asked our host for recommendations

Humphry's was the first one we came to. It looked good, and indeed was. Food & wine are now being consumed.