Day 10 - Afscheid Netherlands, Guten Tag Deutschland

Come on Sylvie I said, more to pep myslef up than encourage her, it's another fairly short day today and off we went. We were well and truly in the heart of agricultural Holland, huge fields spread out before us as far as the eye could see and beyond. Following the map we litterally zig-zagged our was accross the flat land. It was to be honest slightly dull landscape, broken up only by huge beautiful red brick barns with very majestic houses attached to one end. The barns really were glorious, very low with lots of windows. The fields were busy with people working in tractors and by hand, passing one field we were cheered by a machine going along churning up the ground and spitting up onions into neat rows. Neat rows of carrots covered another huge field but potatoes were the king crop in the area, one processor practically declared it was making the world a better place by selling potatoes.

With the wind driving into us no matter which way we were cycling and 3 pages into our map book with another 6 to go I started grumbling to myself about the obvious lack of scale in the map book, we were supposed to be travelling the same distance as yesterday yet that had only be 5 pages in the book not 9, we seemed to be cycling backwards.......

We cycled on and as we finally Nieuweschans the Holland/Germany boarder town we began to get excited, a new country was approaching that neither of us had been too. Would there be flags and guards, could we get another stamp in our passports? No, the crossing into Germany was marked only by an increase in the number of German number plates and the smooth Dutch cycle paths turning to the knobbly bobbly brick roads, arrrrgggghhhh! 2 miles of being shaken around and my the screw on my bike rack popped out, it was getting late and we were tired but I couldn't cycle like this. We did a bodge job of fixing it with a cable tie (thanks for reminding us to take these Dan B) and hobbled on. Then just like that there was a little bike shack, we hadn't come accross a bike shop our entire journey and now here was one was, just when we needed it. The mechanic quickly put in a new screw and the gave the bike a once over, he seemed pleased and sent us on our way with a chocolate bar each. Next stop, to my amusement was Weener, here the bright lights of a cosy bakery shop were too much to resist and we brought a delicious cake each, yum!

It was getting late and dark as we finally made it  to beautiful Leer, a very picturesque riverside town. We had decided to stay in a hostel as we were so tired. Luxury.

Outside the hostel having a cigarette was Thomas, a German man cycling from Paris to St Petersburg (over several trips/years) with his son. Sylvie chatted with him whilst I checked in and we decided to meet for a drink. Having cleaned up and missed the hostel dinner we met Thomas and went for a pizza and a beer. Thomas was really good company and we had a lovely night eating pizza and chatting. He looked just like my friend Arron which was very bizarre.

Several beers later we wobbled home (on foot) to our warm cosy beds.

I was at this point still annoyed at the fault in the map and was convinced we must have travelled far further than the 50 something miles the route had set out, I decided to tot up the mileage again and immediately realised the maps, ok, my mistake. I had forgotten to add the first leg of the journey to the total days mileage and we had done an extra 20 miles, sorry my sister!

75 miles cycled today!....................