Big Ben' s Bike Blog

Day 20; back home Today 115 km home, crossing 4 major rivers. The recent flooding in Belgium and Germany made the water level very high for this time of the year. Normally we would have used little ferries, some of them were out of service now due to the high water. We had only one ferry, after 20 km over the river Maas. On board 2 huge tractors with grass cutters to be taken across. The ferry had major problems having these two vehicles on board, the skipper started manoeuvring them in a favourable position and at one point the deck of the ferry subsided with a serious amount of water. A Belgium car driver was so scared by this that he reversed his car in and swiftly drove off the ferry to take a bridge further down. We trusted the skipper and safely arrived at the other side of the river.  We had coffee and cake at a trout farm and crossed the last 3 rivers by bridge. The day was uneventful but pleasant with a good average speed of 25.3 km with a slight headwind. For a moment we ...

  Day 12; Exploring Paris. The Versailles railway station is in front of our hotel. It is a beautiful fin du siècle railway station, a pleasure to get on the train. Ben pushed Es in the only train that was departing at the very moment we arrived at the platform, leading to some marital tension because we were not sure at all where this train was heading anyway. The train and the marriage were heading in the right direction so we arrived in time at the Picasso Museum for an exhibition on Picasso and Rodin. After the exhibition we made a long walk through the city. Place des Vosges with a light lunch, coffee at the Centre Pompidou, a very interesting explanation about the repairs on the Norte Dame, the Sorbonne, the Pantheon and finally the Gardins de Luxembourg. We took the train back to Versailles at the Boulevard St Michel and ended a very enjoyable day at an Indian restaurant. Time for bed now, tomorrow 102 km to Beauvais.

  Day 10; Orleans- Chartres in the rain, 75 km Especially elderly French give us thumbs up all day. I guess we are the reminder of long forgotten times when the tandem was popular in France. France had some famous tandem builders like Rene Herse, but also Peugeot, Gitane and Look had a tradition of building nice tandems. Cyfac in the Bourgogne still makes some very nice tandems…. In the ENFB magazine in Holland (an organisation that promotes cycling, and has fully jumped on the electric bike) recently stated that not many tandems would be sold now the man who wants to cycle with his wife buys her an electric bike. They could not be further off the truth; tandeming is a team effort as riding after your hubby on one of these accu bikes is making the wife a lesser part of evolution. So far on emancipation and tandems. We woke up to the familiar sound of raindrops on our Orleans roof. Breakfast was provided from a local bakery with a broken down oven, it was an excellent excuse ...

Tandemride in times of Corona around the North of Holland   Before Corona the plan was to ride to Paris and back on our 25 year old Vittorio tandem. But when the Corona crisis got more and more serious it became obvious that cycling through France and Belgium was no longer possible. The good news was that just before Ascension Day the Dutch rules on the lock down became less strict. It looked like a 4 day cycling tour of our own country was possible; it was allowed to stay and eat in hotels and on the way there would be many chances to get take away food and coffee.   The North of Holland had been on our list for a long time, but the closer to home the less you feel an urge to work on this part of your bucket list. The first destination was Bourtange, a fortified village in the far North East of the Netherlands. The second target was to visit the medieval towns in Friesland, all famous of the Eleven Cities Iceskating Marathon which is organised only in very cold winters. The l...