At 8.00, it was time to disembark the ship, which resulted in the earliest start into a day yet for us. After passport control, we realized that our GPS route did not load properly so we had to go old school, and following the signs for the bike route. This also meant that almost immediately, we lost all cycle tourers that disembarked with us because the very first bit of signed bike route did an unnecessary loop that they all must have avoided with their better prepared routes.
A few hundred meters in, we quickly learned that we arrived in cyclist heaven. The cycle paths are dedicated, broad, and well marked here. Not surprisingly, we saw lots and lots of cyclists along the entire route even though it was a workday. A big difference is also the many panniers that people have here to carry groceries and other cargo around. Here, panniers does not necessarily equal cycle tourer like in England.
Reece and Anne must have felt similarly at the time: “The roads we were on today all had special inside drives for cyclists only, which makes it very nice. And here there are far more cyclists than in even England.” [Anne to family on Sept. 10, 1948] And later: “Except for the language difficulty, though, this is a perfect country for us. I think I like it better than anyplace we’ve been in. Everything is so clean and fresh looking, and the land is flat, so that riding a bicycle is no trouble at all.”
We followed the LF1, the Noordzeeroute, north to Den Haag (The Hague), where we went to the lovely French Cafe Madleine for breakfast and Cappucino. Anne and Reece had stayed the first night in Den Haag, but we decided to shorten the stay to a quick sightseeing tour by bike and visited the Peace Palace, the Binnenhof (national government building), and the international criminal court.
Then it was beach time! The LF1 closely follows the shoreline north. The dedicated bike path is very, very well maintained and looked a bit like a miniature highway going through a miniature national park in the US at times.
Now yes, Holland is flat, but boy was it windy today. And not in the right direction. In Zaandvoort, there were kite-surfers enjoying the steady and strong north wind. For us, this meant constant pushing to just about reach 20km/h in the flats. We also drafted off of each other for longer stretches to make it a bit easier.
Here and there, we passed old WWII infrastructure like tank walls and bunkers. The beach was part of the Atlantikwall, the crazy long defensive line that the Germans built from 1942 to 1944. Besides the defenses, the Germans also built V1 (a primitive guided missile) launch sites into the dunes to attack southern England.
For the continent, we changed our “find a pub for pints when less than 20km are left” rule to “find a place for ice cream”. We did not have to look long today, as we hit an ice cream store at 19.7km left in the route.
With Stracciatella in our legs, we tackled the final kilometers to Haarlem. In Zandvoort, we finally turned away from the shore which brought a relief from the steady wind.
Given the early start, we also arrived early at 16.00 at the very, very nice Staats hotel, so that there was time for a good nap before journaling for yesterday and dinner, for which we went to a tiny Indonesian place around the corner, where we had the cheapest and probably best restaurant dinner so far on our trip (Gado gado with rice and tofu/tempeh). For the nightcap, we went to the bar of the local brewery Uiltje, where most beers on tap had ABVs > 6% and there were many imperials with 11+% – a clear change to the low ABV ales in England. We enjoyed the large draft selection with two flights, and enjoyed the cookie imperial stout and the pineapple imperial Märzen the most. So yes, so far we can only agree with Reece and Anne’s sentiment that Holland is the place to be!
Total distance/elevation to date: 1375km/10’275m
Day 17 Route and Stats
The 1948 Tour 
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