2013_05_12 Vianen to Dordrecht

Breakfast @ 8:00 - On the bikes by 9:00 from Vienen.  Split up the day into two 16 mile segments.  Vianen to Schoonhaven (The Silver City) and then after lunch to Kinderdijk (The Children's Dike).

Antique tug boat parade going past where we were docked.  

There they go!

"Normal" Dutch weather approaching.

Ready to ride?

Old city gate into Vianen.

Looking around.

Rode around in Vianen for a real short time and then hit the road.  Started out going through several quaint villages.  It seems that EVERYONE in Holland takes pride in their homes.  Every home - and these are farm communities have landscaping that looks like it was done by a professional landscaper. No litter anywhere and every thing in it's place.

I thought I lost this image.  Found it!

Beautiful old homes along the way through the countryside.

Roofs are made with reeds from marshes.

Just a little house built in 1565!  The trees you see are lindens.  Trained to grow like this so that when they leaf out they provide shade in the summer.  In the winter they allow for sunshine and light.

Bike trail signs

Some of us carried a map with the list of bike paths to follow to your destination.  From S to 10 to 20, etc.  This is fine but the bike guide Tom often ignored the route and winged it!  Also not so fine if you leave the group in a small pack and maybe can't decide which way to go. 

Every bike path is laid out with easily understood markings to help you stay on the right path.  Each municipality in Holland has a numbering system for their bike paths, from 1 to 99.  If you have the supplied biking map supplied from our boat your entire trip is laid out for you.  At the top of the map is a series of numbers that correspond to the bike paths you are to follow to your destination,  The trick is to find the sign pointing to the next number as you come to a bike intersection.  Sounds easy right?  It was for a while until somehow 6 of us "got off the beaten path" for a while.  We six sort of bolted away from the "pack" because they were going so slow.  We missed a turn at one of the numbers and wound up on a bike path that paralleled a fairly major highway.  Unfortunately we then had to face a stiff headwind with very little trees to break it.  After we went quite a while it finally dawned on us that we were not seeing any numbers for bike routes.  We saw a town called Cabauw that seemed to lead us back to a bike path.  The fact that it was going away from our lunch spot didn't seem to phase the others.

Cabauw was a beautiful little town probably worth the side track.  

We hit the next intersection and stood there for quite a while trying to decide which way to go.  Four of the group wanted to go to the right but I finally confined them to go left (towards Schoonhaven).  We reached one more block where a sign told us to go to the left (as you look at it) for bike route 10.  This seemed wrong to me and we asked a local guy.  Another He laughed and told us the spot we wanted was about 100 meters to the right!  Over a short rise and there was the river and shortly after that the boat was moored!  We were so happy to see the boat again.  A very short time later the "rest" of the party appeared for lunch at the boat.  

So glad to "find" the boat again.

Old city gate of Schoonhaven.

After lunch I got on my bike and it was locked with no key in it.  Someone else locked my bike and took off with my key.  I had to go inside and tell Walter (the boat captain) my story.  After yesterday's lost time he gave me the elfish eye like what's wrong with this guy?  He gave me a universal key and we met the rest of the people at the church in Schoonhaven.  I got them all together and one of the Peter's owned up an threw me my key.  Back in business again.  I gave the universal key to our bike guide Thomas because I didn't want to lose it.

Canal in Schoonhaven.

Waiting for the ferry.

We took a ferry across a river and started towards Kinderdijk.  This 16 miles was just brutally windy.  It rained a little bit but nothing like yesterday.  Thomas said that the last trip he led the wind was always at their backs!  I would say that the last 8 miles were almost directly into a strong headwind.  Not fun at all - just a long pretty miserable slog.

Stopped for lunch here.

Old windmill

Crossing a bridge over a canal

Girls spirits still high?

Many windmills at the end of the ride.  Non functional - purely for tourists to take pictures!

At almost the very end we came to a string of 15 or 16 old windmills that yielded some pretty good images.  Had I known that they were right at the end I could have just ridden on the barge and rode less than a mile form the end to see them.  I guess the journey is the thing!  We had a poll going to guess how many minutes over or under 20 minutes it would take the "two Riches" to finish the ride.  We waited at the boat to see everyone finish.  I lost - I chose 20 minutes and they appeared 33 minutes after we did.  

Richie and Rich (up at the top) finish the journey!

The boat took off for about an hour's journey from Kinderdijk to to Dorddrecht where we moored for the night.  Dinner was a Asian theme with a curry soup with shrimp, flavored chicken with rice and veggies and a dish of ice cream with strawberries!  Awesome - some thought the chicken too salty.  I was just hungry.  We burned a million calories today - I just wanted to eat.

After dinner we took a short walk around the town with Thomas.  Again, a beautiful town - actually a pretty big town but being Sunday night it was mostly closed.

Tomorrow a slightly later breakfast (8:30) and more boat travel.  We ONLY have about 2.5 hours on the bikes before we re-board to a trip through the locks to Antwerp, Belgium.  We should have more to do tomorrow night in Antwerp.

We hope the internet situation will be better tomorrow and failing that I will try to get on at Antwerp in an internet cafe.  More later…….