July 1. On the way from Brugge to Hoek van Holland we crossed major waterways three times. The last crossing was a rather long ferry ride across the Nieuwe Maas, or Nieuwe Waterweg, which is the ship canal formed by the Rhine, Maas and Waal rivers and flows from the Rotterdam harbor to the North Sea. The last part of our ride to Hoek van Holland seemed long and followed the canal with its port installations and oil refineries. It is very interesting but not very pretty and we had an offshore wind to contend with as well. We rewarded ourselves before hand with coffee in a little town called Brielle. According to Maun’s notes we had coffee, apple pie and hazelnute torte. No wonder I like these trips despite how much I sometimes complain. We deserved the treat, it had been a long day, 100k, with only one other short stop where an enterprising young woman had set up a sort of semi-permanent stand with drinks and treats near a little town called Serooskerk. It might have been near the town but it was pretty well in the wilderness and was a pleasant surprise when we came upon it.
Along the ship canal to Hoek van Holland
We made it to the Hoek and were rewarded with a very nice place to stay. The people called it a hotel but it was really their house. We entered right through their front door. They were very nice and let us wash out our things and then use their clothesline so the clothes could dry in the fresh breeze.
It was pretty late by the time we had washed our things so we didn’t do much sight seeing, just found a nice place to eat, Italian again, and again, looking back, an amazing amount of food. Our notes say we shared an antipasto, I had shrimp and mussels with pasta, Maun had a pizza and then we had ice cream and fruit and coffee. Maun can still eat like that, she is sort of a wisp, thin as a reed, and probably even needs to, but not me. I can, maybe, but I certainly don’t need to and I mostly don’t.
When we awoke the next morning Maun greeted me with the news that her passport was missing. She had dreamt about it, she said, and, indeed, her little passport pouch that she wears around her neck on these trips was not there. The hotel owner helped us with several phone calls during which we learned that the restaurant owners lived in Den Haag and wouldn’t be at the restaurant until 2:00 P.M. We tried not to panic and we were sure enough that the passport was in the restaurant that we relaxed a little and enjoyed a very nice breakfast. Now we had plenty of time for the sight-seeing we didn’t do the day before. We found a nice bike shop, always easy places to pass the time. I bought a Rabobank jersey. Circumstances took Maun and I back to the Hoek two more times on different trips and both those times I bought another Rabobank jersey. The last time the shopkeeper wouldn’t believe me that I had been there twice before. I should have sent him a picture. The last jersey I bought has long sleeves and I love it, it is still my favorite jersey. Once I was wearing it while riding in Salt Lake through the university campus. We ended up behind an open tour bus waiting for a red light and from the back of the bus I heard someone shouting “Rabobank, Rabobank.” I rode up to the bus and had a thirty second conversation with a friendly Dutch tourist until the light changed and the bus drove off.
It was nice enough for us to have a picnic lunch in the dunes and finally it was time to go to the restaurant and there was the pouch, right where Maun had left it on the chair next to where she sat. Whew! And now we could get on our way.
Maun on the beach with her passport
We saw our first Dutch mushroom mile marker, turned right, the way the arrow pointed and set out for Den Haag. It had been cold and windy and was still a little windy but much warmer and there was some sun.
Our first mushroom milestone
We had reservations at a hostel in Den Haag but it was not on the path and we just kept riding until we were virtually in the city, ten kilometers past the hostel. We had ridden so far that we ran into a city tourist office and they pointed us back in the direction we had come. Even then we had trouble because the name of the street the tourist office gave us changed before it reached the hostel. But we finally found it and it was somehow still daytime. Not many kilometers, 44, on that day but we had the passport and that was the important thing. And the bike path, partly through woods and partly through dunes, had been beautiful.
Dunes on the way to Den Haag
We rode our bikes into town (Loosduinen) to find dinner. We saw a restaurant that said “Chinese-Indonesian.” Snob that I can be sometimes, I told Maun that a purist would never eat in an Indonesian restaurant that also served Chinese food but my attitude quickly changed when it started pouring rain. We were actually taking shelter under the awning of the restaurant so we locked up our bikes and went in and had one of the nicest Indonesian meals we have ever had. It tasted even better in our memories because it stopped raining just as we finished eating and we had a dry ride home.
Maun didn’t like the hostel because she thought it was too expensive for what it offered and the location was awkward, but I liked it because it was full of cyclists and they were very interesting people, friendly and helpful with information regarding the rest of our route.
We saved our lunch shopping (Maun is very smart. She won’t leave a place until we have enough food with us for whatever situation we might encounter during the day’s ride) for the next day because of the rain. So again in Loosduinen we went to a cheese, dairy, etc. shop. The shopkeeper’s English was absolutely perfect and clearly American so I asked him about it. His family emigrated from Holland to Salt Lake and after he finished school he went back to Holland. We had almost been neighbours at one point. Really is a small world.
My bike in my life 