September 11-16 All Good Things Must End

We had a beautiful ride back from the Vecht in spite of a terrible forecast.  We had strong winds but only mild rain for the last 10km. We’ve had near-ideal weather for the 6 weeks that really mattered. It got a little iffy in the last week but we’ve been lucky to have no severe drenchings while riding. 

Our original plan was to take the bikes home and we spent hours working out all the challenging details of doing that. I booked 5 nights in Hoofddorp (not a favorite but convenient to airport and hazardous goods shippers needed to ship batteries). But then after a great time in Gorssel topped-off with an idyllic time on the Vecht River – we didn’t want to leave. After serious pondering we decided to push our luck and commit to another year.  Which changed all the departure plans, but not the prepaid booking that was close to Schiphol and shippers, but not at all convenient to Ernst’s shop, transit, shopping or much of anything else.

So instead of taking the batteries to a Dangerous Goods Shipper and then the bikes to Schiphol to be boxed for the flight, we had to get them back to Ernst’s shop in Uitgeest for storage. On Friday we debated the weather situation – rode to grocery shopping  in the morning getting soaked and windblown. But for the long ride we waited until afternoon and picked a good 3-hour break in the weather. We had a fantastic 40km ride from Hoofddorp to UitGeest following Komoote’s route east of Haarlem – a hundred turns but hardly any stops through all kinds of charming farming, vacation, and fishing lands.  Our e-bikes record our journeys and connect to phones so we should be able to find it for the reverse trip in 2026.  We passed an old WWII fort that’s converted to a part-time pub where we’ve had beer with friends on other trips. Of course a ferry –  not our familiar one taken a dozen or more times at Velsen but the one much further east at Spaarndam. We crossed the Noordzeekanaal here once before during our boat/bike barge family trip.  We made it all the way to Ernst’s  Bike-totaal shop in Uitgeest with no rain! We were sad to leave the bikes – they’ve been loyal friends every day for the past 7 weeks, but they’ll receive good TLC from Ernst this winter. 

So, the adventure winds down for this year. Without bikes our wings are clipped and we are tethered to the surly bonds of earth on foot and transit.  We took the train back to Haarlem and from there a bus and then a walk to our tiny house. The next day we took the same walk+bus route back to Haarlem to pick up the luggage we had stored at another B&B and stopped by our favorite pizza spot where we toasted a great adventure and hopefully more to come with NO BAD LUCK!