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London: Houses of Parliament
On the train down a load of old folks get on the train. One of them is reading a book called “A Brief History of the Countryside in 100 Objects”, which sounds like the quintessential old person book.
The train rolls into Kings Cross eventually and we disembark and wander down into the Underground. Whenever I come to London I marvel at how quickly I readopt the language of city living. We dive into the bowels of the city and board the Victoria Line to Oxford Circus.
Back on the streets we weave through polyglot crowds towards Buckingham Palace. The palace is demure and the crowds outside are restless and wandering. We cross the street and snap a couple of pics of the Victoria Monument and then head down a treelined road past the Kings Guard Museum towards Westminster.
In Westminster we find a row of three red-painted English phone boxes, at each of which is a queue some 50 people long waiting to take pictures with the phone box. I guess these phone boxes must be the most optimally-placed for tourist photography because the Elizabeth Tower of the Houses of Parliament is sort of in the background. I've always thought the most British phone boxes are the old BT cornet-labelled ones standing solitary at the foot of Cross Fell filled with forgotten books. But: NOT BRITISH ENUF. At one phone box, a 14-year-old tries on a series of modelesque facial expressions, shifting hipshot from one side to the other. At the next, a Buddhist in burgundy robes and sandals stands stockstill with the door of the phone box half-open, as if he's Buddhist Clark Kent or something.
We wind through crowds past Westminster Hall and spot the visitors' entrance to the Houses of Parliament. There is no queue, no fanfare. No one seems to have noticed. I wander through the fences towards one of the security personnel. Behind them stands a man with an automatic rifle braced against his hip. I half expect him to raise his NATO-issue bullpup and start yelling at me. He doesn't.
I ask the security guy whether there are any more tours of the House of Commons on today. He says no, but they’re currently debating and we can go in and watch if we want. Perks of being British. I duly shrug off my backpack for a security check and then we’re in the medieval Westmister Hall under the centuries-old roofs and standing on the spot where Charles I was marked for execution.
I feel very much as if we’ve discovered a secret shortcut into the heart of British politics.
Up past St. Stephen’s Porch and into St. Stephen’s Hall, where linger school groups on excursion and, at intervals, women standing with extraordinarily well-behaved dogs. (These dogs, as it turns out, have all won awards for one thing or another; non-award-winning dogs are not allowed in the Houses of Parliament.)
We wait ten or fifteen minutes and then are ushered through the Central Hall (featuring: a Post Office!) into a series of corridors and up flights of stairs to the mezzanine supporting the public viewing area for the House of Commons. We render our bags unto a surprisingly sassy man in a morning suit and suddenly we’re in the House of Commons, looking down through a pane of plexiglas at a couple dozen Members of Parliament debating compensation for Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) women.
My brief comments on the debate: the Tories presented better rhetorically, but I struggle to find sympathy for the economic cause of a group of 70-year-old women who benefitted directly from one of the strongest periods of economic growth in the history of Britain, and whose main complaint is that they couldn’t be bothered to read their own mail.
This opinion, I suspect, wouldn't go over well with the half dozen WASPI women sitting two rows above us, who cry, "Hear hear!" when the Tories speak, and who cry "Shame shame!" when Labour speaks.
A little ways down from the WASPI women, a couple of teenagers snap their fingers (i.e. like "oh snap" from circa 2006) when Torsten Bell says something spicy. The sassy man in the morning suit comes down out of nowhere and scolds them: "Stop doing that with your arm." The teenagers leave a couple of minutes later.
And with that, please enjoy this photo of the toilets in Westminster Hall From Parliament we wander down past Downing Street, where I'm disappointed to discover that Number 10 isn’t even visible from Whitehall Road. Then on to Charing Cross station and back into the depths of the earth for a ride up to Islington to check in to our lodging.
Refreshed, we strike back out towards Pentonville (of the famous HMP) for dinner at Little Georgia on Barnsbury Road. What a fantastic little spot! I get a chkmeruli and Sam gets a bean stew; a bit of cake and a glass of dessert wine finish us off.
We walk slowly back to the hotel via the Uniqlo and the Regent’s Canal and pass out at like 8:30 pm.
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C2A: Amsterdam, finally
Sam isn't feeling well in the morning so we ride together down to the Gouda station and I see her onto a train that will take her into Amsterdam. There are some disruptions due to someone stealing cable on the train lines, so it takes her longer than the expected 15 minutes.
I turn around and head north out of the city. There's a stiff crosswind blowing out over the Reeuwijk ponds, the result of peat overharvesting. These days it's amply serviced by the leisure watercraft industry. I cross the Old Rhine, (Oude Rijn), much diminished, in Bodegraven, then push on through the fields and canals to Nieuwkoop. I pass a lock: a first; I thought all the water was basically at the same level around here.
Big houses line the road in Nieuwkoop, with a little canal between the road and the front garden. There are little rowboats moored up between the lilypads, with water easements leading out onto the lakes behind the houses. I wonder how far one could travel by water alone. Probably pretty far, although I guess rights of way could get tricky.
I skirt Zevenhoven and then enter the sprawling industrial parks east of Schipol. A couple of airplanes take off and bank over my head; I try to get video but keep turning up like 5 seconds too late. I take a bridge over a highway and feel like I can see the entire country laid out before me. Man it's flat in the Netherlands.
Soon I'm riding through Amstelveen, which I suppose must be where all the rich people in Amsterdam live, judging by the number of Mercedes and Audis I see in the gravel drives abutting the enormous houses lining the road here. Then I arrive at the Amsterdamse Bos country park, but the cyclepath is closed so I follow a woman on a cargo bike up the main street towards the Amsterdam ring road. She easily outpaces me. I tell myself it's because she has a battery and I'm carrying two tents.
On the other side of the ring road I join a gaggle of cyclists heading up into town, but I peel off towards the museum and the tourist quarter with a painter on a bike. All of his kit is in a little tray attached to the back of his bakfiets; his brushes are in a case he wears on his back. I think it's just terrific, even if he's way faster than I am. He nearly obliterates a little tourist boy who wanders into the bike path. His grandmother pulls the boy back; the painter doesn't react at all: no swerve, no flinch, no look. Just keeps on riding. I eat his dust as we ride through the museum itself.
On the far side, I cross a bridge and suddenly I'm in the thick of it. There are people everywhere: Portugese women walking in groups, German families with maps, Americans on orange rental bicycles pulling out into traffic without looking. I have to make an emergency stop in front of a lady who pulls crosswise into the cyclepath; I hear her boyfriend say, "I always tell you to look both ways," in a tone that indicates he's an insufferable person to spend time with. I follow the lines that the locals take and sneer at a group of men in tight trousers, all of whom have their phone out, debating loudly which way it is to the sex museum. I feel a totally unearned sense of superiority, high up on my tourist bike.
Sam calls and tells me that due to the cable theft problem, she's been held up at the previous station. I ride under the central station, which smells powerfully of urine, and along the quayside, down to where Sam's waiting for me. I find her sitting on a wall with her head in her hands.
We're both mighty hungry so we head across the street for some food and a last Nice Beer before making our way out to the ferry by train. It's a short ride on the train from Amsterdam to Driehuis, and the train's empty; and then it's a short ride from Driehuis out to IJmuiden, where the ferry is waiting. We collect our ticket and take our bikes up onto the boat and leash them to the bulkhead. There are six or seven other bicycles on the boat with us: tourists heading up to Scotland maybe.
We head up a deck or two and find our cabin and then I immediately fall asleep.
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C2A: Into the Real Netherlands
The area around Standaarbuiten and Moerdijk seems to be one sprawling industrial/farming estate. Long stock-straight rows of potatoes on one side, idling lorries and docking bays on the other. Just beyond, a set of bridges and new housing estates. The houses are manicured and stylish, and a few of them confusingly have thatched roofs? Canals start to wind their way amid the fields on the way out to Hollands Diep.
We’re entering the Real Netherlands.
We pass through a sleepy town called Zevenbergen and then a village called Moerdijk, where the locals mounted a resistance to the invading Nazis who sought to control the Hollands Diep estuary. On both sides of the estuary there are the remnants of lines of concrete bunkers, placed by the Germans as defense and now scrawled with graffiti about love and totally caved in with dirt and nettles. We climb a hill on the far side of the town and find, at the top of the hill, the Hollands Diep itself, broad and roaring with traffic.
This is not the first time that we find rivers at the top of hills. (The hills are, it scarcely needs to be said, actually embankments keeping the North Sea out of the country.)
We cross the Moerdijk bridge into Zuid-Holland and the cut through the fields to the south side of Dordrecht. The suburbs are quiet and green and launch us with very little fanfare into the heart of the town, where we stop at Nobel Brood for a bit of brunch. I get a kanelbulle, which transports me directly back to Sweden a couple of years ago (although it’s nowhere near the real thing). Then we board our first waterbus across the Oude Maas: a pound each saves us going back on ourselves to cross the river via bridge.
On the way out of Dordrecht we pass through a type of residential area I’ve never seen before: houses on narrow islands abutting a tiny canal. There are gardens watered by the canal and little canoes moored at wooden decks, all abutting a cyclepath frequented almost entirely by girls in baggy jeans and pensioners in wraparound sunglasses. It seems somehow so idyllic. And then we climb a hill and find another canal crossing the previous one at a higher level than all of the houses.
We turn off and make our way through Nieuw-Lekkerland to catch our second waterbus of the day across the Lek. We time it perfectly and fly out of Lekkerkerk with the wind behind us.
From here it just gets more Dutch. On both sides now are long, narrow patches of grass, sometimes with cows or sheep or goats, sometimes with a couple of lapwings or seagulls, alternating with long rows of water, only a couple of inches below the land. I don’t know how the whole thing doesn’t flood under rain. There has got to be some serieus engineering at work here.
We fly past kids coming home from school, pitying their battle against 20 kph headwinds, before rolling into Gouda and joining the rush hour bike traffic. Sitting in a queue of bikes at a traffic light makes me feel extremely smug.
Eventually we arrive at the summerhouse where we’re staying for the night. It’s rustic and cosy in perfect proportions, so we settle in. I make a quick run to the shop for groceries on my bike. I think I could make a good Dutch person, if only I could learn the language.
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C2A: Into the Netherlands
Late now and I want to get to bed so today’s a short one.
The road out of Belgium is long and straight, except for the part that winds through Antwerp. In the city we cross under the mighty Schelde via pedestrian tunnel, the big brother of the one under the Tyne in Newcastle. Then along the railways towards the Dutch border.
Stop in Essen at an extremely local pub, where we chat briefly with the owner and a couple of regulars about touring and where we’re going. Get a bottle of Leffe Bruin for the road, gratis. Belgians are good folks.
Passing into the Netherlands we wave sayonara to the straight, immaculate paths and greet winding roads and fields of corn bowed under the weight of the wind. Have a late lunch of dubiously Mexican food in Roosendaal and then push on for Standaarbuiten where we camp for the night. Shower, wash clothes, peep the “extraordinary pigs” snoozing in their hut, spooning like humans.
Then bed.
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C2A: Ghent and environs
Up at the luxuriant hour of 7:30. The sun’s shining when we awake but coyly retreats behind a veil of cloud while we pack. I’m fine with that. My skin needs a break.
Easy riding out of Bruges, following the cyclepath alongside a broad, straight road headed due east. There’s a bit of a tailwind so we get a good clip going. I’m sore but I don’t feel bad; I wonder if this is what being a cyclist feels like.
Clouds roll in, relieving us of the burden of the sun for a few hours.
Outside of a town called Adegem we pass a Canadian war cemetery; we stop and dismount. Some combination of physical exhaustion and the distance from home makes me emotional. A lot of the graves have personal messages from family and friends; most of them are quotes from the bible or from psalms but there are a few demonstrating unconcealed grief from parents or wives, and these are very moving.
I try to read a few out loud but feel myself on the verge of tears, so I don’t.
We ride on for a while and join the Schipdonkkanal for some easy riding through the fields. There are cows and donkeys and potatoes on the one side and long rows of old trees on the other.
We stop for early lunch in a town called Lovendegem, which seems to have been put up in the 1980s as a community for upper-middle class retirees, folks on a Good Pension. Apart from the church there are no old buildings anywhere, only brick and tile abutting perfectly laid paving-stone sidewalks. It’s incongruous; I’m used to stone villages with bad roads laid out 700 years ago.
I spy a group of middle aged men in pastel-coloured button downs drinking beers, so I figure it’s a safe bet to start drinking at 11am on a Sunday in Belgium. I pick a name I don’t recognise off the beer list: Fourchette. Imagine my utter humiliation when the beer comes out in a long-stem red wine glass; delicate logotype on the side and a whiff of 30-year-old eau de parfum and baby powder in its wake. I drink it slowly. Midway through lunch, a retired couple walk in and the woman comes over to ask me what I’m drinking (in Dutch-accented French: a first). Then she turns to the waitress and gives her the old “I’ll have what he’s having”. My mortification is complete. Joke’s on her though because the lunch is delicious.
A bit of rain on the paths around lunch; the smell of wet asphalt evokes memories of childhood. I know it’s called petrichor, but I think that word is for redditors ONLY ok.
We roll into Ghent under a threatening but ultimately toothless sky. Tourists crowd around the Gravensteen, a big castle from the 1100s with a rich history that we learn nearly nothing about, because we’re three market squares over getting waffles and you guessed it more beers. We both agree that Ghent is nicer than Bruges, though: more oriented towards the locals, less dominated by tourism.
Leave Ghent via the F4 cycleway, following the railway on a long, flat, perfectly straight course. The smooth, even surface of the path makes our wheels sing, a high hum like a glass harmonica. A few trains pass while we go. We eat up the miles, making great time towards Sint-Niklaas even with a break for stretches along the way.
I’m a bit queasy for some reason by the time we get to town, so we get an inoffensive dinner at an Asian fusion place and look with awe on the massive works being undertaken on the Grote Markt, the largest market square in Belgium. Photos of the market from before the works started indicate that it was a bit of a grim spot, just a big empty paved space. I don’t envy the pavers.
Then up the road to our host for the night, a man who works for the city with a fantastic house: modern yet cosy, with a signature Belgian massive plate glass window. We chat for a bit about politics and work and the Dutch language, and then we turn in early for bed.
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