Big Ben' s Bike Blog

12.06.2021. Day 1 three weeks before day 2. We still have to work for 3 weeks, but today felt like holiday. To make efficient use of the 3 weeks holiday we planned to cycle the tandem to the most southern part of the Netherland this weekend in a 180km long day, which would take 2 days travel time off our ambitious planning.  The alarm was set at 5.45 for a scheduled depart at 07.00 but due to navigation problems with one of our Garmins we lost 30 min of precious time. It was a great day for the outdoors, warm cloudy and not much wind. In the first hour we reached the Rhine bridge at Emmerich Germany, this is usually where the feeling of being away from home starts to creep in. It was a lovely passage through NiederRhein and through the pelgimage town of Kevelaer. We went back into the Netherlands after 45 km. I knew that Arcen was a nice little town on the border of the River Maas, so we pushed on. We found a restaurant with a view on the river and reloaded calories with Asperge Soup

France revisited Last year there were a few weeks when it was possible to travel around Europe. We were very lucky to have these weeks off . We went to France to visit a few cathedrals that had been on our bucket list for some time. It was a wonderful experiece; cycling 1600km and visiting Laon, Paris, Chartres, Rouen and on the way back seafood in Boulogne sur Mer. It was not sure what the corona would permit this year, but we noticed a few more interesting places a bit further in France. If we could just combine a few more interesting places? In the meantime our tandem options had changed. Two years ago we crashed our 25 year old Vittorio tandem and finding the right parts took the best part of the summer. We realised that our old trusty lady was aging and that we needed a second tandem because weekends that we were off together are precious and tandems due to the heavy load are more prone to failure and finding parts is usually time consuming. After long deliberation we ordered a st