New decisions

Christmas in a city where orange trees in every street carry an abundance of ripe fruit, where families of at least three generations go to mass together, the women wearing fur coats while the outside air temperature is a balmy 17 degrees Celsius, the men sporting the new fragrances Papá Noel has just surprised them with, where the sun shines on so many days each year that not everybody remembers to take off their sunglasses on the occasional cloudy day, where buildings compete in opulence while supermarkets can be recognized from afar by the presence of beggars on the doorstep, where the number of whole smoked boar legs, hooves and all, that are carved on the Christmas table is surpassed only by the unimaginable numbers of these hams that were on display in the butcher’s shops, supermarkets and market stalls that sold them. Christmas in Valencia. There is a bit of a contrast between the interior and the coastal regions, as we were to find out.

The cierzo dries this country out. And helps us along.

After Sos del Rey Católico and a climb to another pass just to the south, most of the ride to Zaragoza was downhill, into the wide plains of the river Ebro. When the pressure differences are just right, what is locally known as the cierzo can develop. A dry wind, it blows from the northwest, and as it is channeled by the Ebro valley, it picks up speed, dessicating everything in its way, until it thunders into Catalonia. We happily thundered along with it in the direction of Zaragoza, through visibly dry terrain in which brave farmers were nonetheless trying to make things grow. Flocks of vultures kept an eye on two cyclists who must have been an unfamiliar sight but were obviously not quite ‘meal material’ yet.

We had met Lin, who had left her native Canada to embark on a round the world trip, while studying to become English teachers in Chiang Mai. After the course, she had spent several months in Borneo and some time in India, and she had just arrived in Madrid, from where she took a train to Zaragoza to come spend a few days with us. We were happy to catch up and talk about old times and new, and visited the old city centre together. Lin had grown quite used to tropical climates and decided not to stay in Europe in December but instead move on to Ecuador, while we weighed our options for continuing to Valencia. The most obvious route was only partially available for cyclists and would entail long detours and high mountain passes. We decided against this and instead, opted for more or less following the Ebro to the Mediterranean coast and then heading south. We didn’t know it then, but had we tried to cross the mountain passes west of Valencia, we would certainly have been stuck for many days in what was to be the heaviest snowfall in twenty-five years.

Into Catalonia

The weather caught up with us as soon as we reached the coast. For several days, we looked at the weather forecast and said, nah, not today. During those days, we saw footage on tv being repeated over and over, of towns that were cut off from the outside world by snow and of roads that had become impassable. A quiet spell allowed us to finally continue south to Valencia and see some of the devastation the wind and sea had left behind not far from where we had spent a few days: streets adjacent to the sea, covered with mud and gravel or still partially flooded. Devastation that had not been sufficiently major to make it into the national news. About at this time, the same weather started to affect the rest of Europe and Northern America, but apparently, the news of each country mentioned only what was going on at home, thus, strangely, creating the impression that it was a local phenomenon. Only by consulting websites of newspapers in each country did the extent of this early and serious winter weather become apparent.

Valencia. This is a haven. While the rest of Spain is either being flooded, blown away, or getting snowed in, Valencians are saying to each other, ‘It’s cold, isn’t it?’, when in fact, this seems to be the only part of Spain that isn’t suffering from any of the extreme phenomena that are making headlines nationwide. We have decided to stay here for a while. We have explored the city, immersed ourselves in culture (whatever that means…), found this to be a city to spend some time in. We have rented an appartment. We have found a language institute where, from early next month, we will be taking Spanish lessons for two months. O yes, we like it here. We like the centuries of history that can be seen everywhere. We like the climate. We are in a country and a city where English is hardly spoken and where, as a result, all it takes is to learn some of the local language to immerse yourself in something genuine. Of course, the local language is Valencian, not Spanish. Never mind, Spanish is understood by all and will be of use later on. Good enough for us, good enough for now.

During a demonstration of traditional dances

 

Into Spain

Forgive me, dear reader, for not writing quite as prolifically as I do on our Dutch blog. In fact, we have a loyal but obviously very small audience here, and on many days, the statistics show zero page hits… I don’t mean to say: read more often, what I mean is: this is why I don’t write as often as you might expect me to. If ever I was in doubt about the question: would I write if I knew that nobody reads what I write?, I now know the answer

Now, where were we? Ah yes, in southern France, gazing upon the Pyrenees, wondering whether it would be hard to cross them, secretly afraid that yes, it would be hard. After all, we come from a flat country, and although we were practically born on bicycles, our idea of a steep climb has traditionally been the viaducts that we always seemed to find between where we were and where we wanted to go.

But the mountains you are aware of are not mountains to be feared. We took our time climbing to the pass, we knew that we were going to climb to over a thousand meters, and in the end, the road ended up levelling and going into a gentle descent. Our first night in Spain had been well prepared and we enjoyed the change of scenery and surroundings. On the following day, we were in Pamplona.

A perfect curve to end hours of climbing and ease into a welcome descent

Now, Pamplona is well known for the folly of young men who, once a year, try to outrun bulls that are let loose in the streets, mistaking their brazen stupidity for stunning bravery. Prices of accomodation rise up to five times compared to rates in low season during the one week in which this event takes place. Whoever claims that they come to watch this for other reasons than to see blood being shed is probably not being totally honest.

The Pamplona we saw was wet. On the city’s patron saint’s day, the traditional dance of the giants could not take place because of a steadily falling drizzle, and on the next day, big snow flakes made us wonder how it was possible that only days before, we had been riding in t-shirts. We looked at the weather forecast for the west and Portugal, where we had intended to go. Not good. Cold, rain, exactly the kind of weather our so-called water-resistant, breathable Patagonia jackets had already had trouble coping with. Any other ideas? The Spanish east coast looked better, the south-east looked perfect. Right. No, not right, we’re turning left, not to Portugal but to southeastern Spain.

Foz de Lumbier: a former railway, converted into cycle path

Having made this decision, even the weather seemed to agree. Cool but clear days made cycling a real pleasure, the country opened up and the short distances we covered in the two following days were largely made up for by the sheer beauty of the sights we saw. Rolling plains, bounded by snow-covered hills. A canyon that was cut by a river and is accessible only by pedestrians and cyclists via a path that was made from a disused railway. Flocks of a hundred vultures that circle to gain height, then cross the plains to find new thermals, and circle again. Medieval villages, steeped in history and dormant at this time of the year, ours to discover.

Like Sos del Rey Católico. Liberated in the tenth century from the occupying Arabs, it remained a fortified outpost of the catholic world for centuries. In 1452, Ferdinand II was born here, and when he became known as Ferdinand the Catholic, his birthplace changed its name from mere ‘Sos’ into the longer version that we know today. It is a beautiful, well-preserved medieval village, and a joy to stroll through. Here, dear reader, is where we leave you, because this is how far we have come so far, and it is time to get some sleep. Come visit again some time, we may have more to tell…

Charlotte admiring the medieval town of Sos del Rey Católico

 

The Southwest

That four course lunch I spoke about earlier, we were on to something there. In fact, we have grown to like them. This is how we usually eat now: before setting off, breakfast with (preferably crispy fresh) croissants, raisin buns, chocolate buns, and coffee. Lunch: one of those set lunches that every little restaurant offers. Always good value. Often a buffet of first courses, then a main course that may be a local favourite (such as tête de veau sauce gribiche: meaty bits from a calf’s head, simmered in stock and served with a cold emulsion sauce with gherkins) or a national classic such as roast pork or Bask chicken, then cheese and/or desert. Of course wine to help flush all of this down, and coffee. Bread is brought to the table as a matter of course, as is a carafe of water – unlike in Dutch restaurants, where you ask for it, and they bring you a tiny bottle that is added to the bill for a perfectly unreasonable price. Dinner, finally: French bread, cheese, ham; enough to fill the stomach, simple but excellent provided you buy good ingredients, no preparation necessary, and it’s light enough to fall asleep as soon as the meal is finished.

Lunch in Lacanau, where, surprisingly, life goes on still during the off-season

We spent some time on the Atlantic coast, in villages and cities that had one thing in common: they were eerily empty. Of course, it’s November. Who wants to spend time in a beach resort in November? Royan is a city of 18000 inhabitants that has an infrastructure suitable for a city of 100.000, and on really (really!) busy days can have up to 400.000 people staying within its city limits. Imagine. The result: when schools begin in September and people who have holiday homes here begin a mass exodus to the cities they make a living in, whole stretches of beach property lie deserted, shutters closed until the following summer. Shops close. Restaurants close. Hotels close.

Royan, November

But Royan at least has a basic year-round population that keeps the lights on. Further down the coast, there are towns like Hourtins-Plage and Carcans-Plage, beach towns spawned by older villages slightly further inland that turn into ghost towns once summer is over. Not even a door that creaks in the wind disturbs the silence, everything is solidly sealed shut. An occasional dude parks his converted ambulance by the seaside and casually prepares his surfboard for the waves that continue to be formed by the November winds. This, for him, must be the good season.

We turn back inland and ride through the forest of Les Landes, the biggest forest of Western Europe, almost entirely man-made. Few people live here, not because of the seasons, but there is not much to live for. The occasional small village is populated by government employees: mayors, postal workers, school teachers, park officials.

People on stilts in the Landes, by Jean Louis Gintrac, Musée des Beaux Arts, Bordeaux. Found via Wikimedia Commons.

Les Landes used to be a desolate country. The sandy soil did not yield consistent crops, the combination of the nearby ocean, humid weather and higher terrain all around created an unhealthy climate, and poverty was widespread. Shepherds would typically walk around on stilts to keep their feet warm and dry, stay above poisonous prickly bushes and rapidly walk around their flocks.

In the nineteenth century, most of this desolate country was turned into pine forest by massive efforts to plant an already endemic species of pine. The flocks of sheep disappeared, and jobs were created by the turpentine industry, which relied on the resin of these pine trees. Eventually, this too was abandoned when the manual labor that was involved in this process became too costly to compete with foreign countries where labor was still cheap. Today, it is lumber that keeps Les Landes going, and we saw stack after stack of tree trunks, waiting to be shipped to a sawmill or paper plant.

The language of this region is a dialect of the Occitan language, and once again, I am struck by the diversity of this country. Occitan only very remotely resembles French, but is related to Catalan and other Iberic languages. It was a major literary language until maybe a century ago, when it was gradually surpassed by the French that was taught in schools and used by the government. But it is still spoken, and very much defines the identity of southern French peoples. Bask, of course, although geographically near, is an entirely different story. Fascinating stuff.

We are in Dax. Part Gascogne, part French Bask Country, but in any case not far from Spain and the mountains that form the border. We have seen the silhouette of the Pyrenees on the horizon, jagged peaks, forbidding country. We will soon cross the mountains. I hope.

 

Further south

Not a lot of progress since the last update, we seem to be introducing a lot of rest days. In fact, there turn out to be many good reasons to have a rest day: rain in the weather forecast (whether or not it materializes is irrelevant!), something that is worth visiting and must not be missed, rendez-vous with parents (in law), and, oh yes, the need to rest those sore leg muscles.

Charlotte and her parents at Chambord castle

Near Tours, we spent two days with Charlotte’s parents, one day visiting the city, the other visiting some of the famous Loire river castles that would have been a bit out of our way on our bikes but were within easy range with their car. You always know you’ve come to a famous landmark when you meet large concentrations of Japanese tourists, as was the case here. What is relatively new is that Chinese are also beginning to make an appearance. They are happily welcomed by the French, who even go as far as internationalising the food that is offered where orientals can be seen: now, the sandwich stand sells not only baguettes with ham and cheese, but also with surimi!

We wouldn’t have wanted to miss the castles. Although very different in design, Chenonceau and Chambord were both impressive, for various reasons. We came to dub Chambord with its rigorous symmetry and heavy walls a man’s castle (it was designed to be a hunting ‘retreat’), while Chenonceau, with the elegance of its architecture and the way it played with the surrouning landscape and the sunlight, was much more a woman’s castle.

Part of Chenonceau was built over the river Cher

On towards Poitiers, and here we followed a part of the old, but revived, pilgrim’s route to Santiago de Compostela in the north-west of Spain. It is a popular route with people on foot, on bicycles and even on donkeys. This is where the following scene could take place:

‘Saint-Jacques de Compostelle?’ Charlotte looks up from the map she’s been studying to see who has just spoken to her. We are in the middle of endless farmland, with no traffic, a single farm nearby and a road sign that shouldn’t be there. The man who had just rode past us on his bicycle, a rarity in this country, had apparently turned around to see if he could help us find our way.

‘It’s straight ahead, you’ll come to another road that has a sign just like this one. That is the one you should take’. Now, people pointing the way whenever we stand still and turn our map upside down to see if that helps in orienting ourselves is nothing unusual. But here on this country road in the middle of France, this man is helping us find our way to a Spanish town that is a thousand miles away!

Almost apologetically, he explains that especially in spring and summer, many people pass this way, and most of them stop at this junction to look at their maps and scratch their heads. He’s been planning to put up a sign, but simply hasn’t had the time to do it yet.

We don’t meet any of the modern day pilgrims. ‘Tis not the season for pilgrimages. We do meet a lot of elderly British and Dutch couples who stop for the night on one of the campsites where we pitch our tent. Invariably, with their camper vans or their trailers, they are either on their way to Spain to spend the winter there, or on their way back, after having spent the autumn in sunnier climes. Invariably, they are only passing by. No time to stop and admire the sights. Theirs is a different way of travelling. Fair enough.

Village in the Vienne

This is one of the reasons why we like travelling on our bicycles. Since we aren’t going fast anyway, we don’t mind stopping for another two days to visit Poitiers and Futuroscope, a theme park that features (among other things) amazing films on giant (or wraparound) screens, or in 3D. And just yesterday, south-west from Poitiers, we rode only 30 kilometers. Because the weather was so nice. And because we had a four-course lunch in a small restaurant that also served the men who were redoing the road. Four courses, wine included, one very friendly price. This, too, is France.

 

And into France

My bike in Mechelen

Belgium, like Holland, has signposted, designated cycling routes, which we happily followed whenever they led the way that we wanted to go. The Flanders cycling route explores the Flemish speaking part of the country, occasionally touching the boundary that separates it from French speaking Wallonia, as if to assert itself, and then withdrawing back into the safety of Flanders. For a few kilometers, we actually rode along a canal that marked the border, not with Wallonia but with France (where a housing project overlooking France proudly bore the name ‘Belle Vue’), before coming to a small enclave of French speaking Belgium that caused our cycle path to retreat, once again, into the Flemish heartland.

One of many ways to enter France

The plan had been to follow another cycle path that was on our map into France, all the way to Boulogne sur Mer. But. Near the border, where we wanted to join it, there were no sign posts. In fact, the road that the map indicated as the way to enter France had a sign saying: no bicycles. We looked around for a while and found a path going approximately our way, with a sign indicating it was open for pedestrians and cyclists. Beginning as a wide, comfortable track winding its way through vineyards, it quickly narrowed, and as it entered a forested area, all that was left was a steep path with steps. This is how we entered France. Cycling is not the same in France.

Boulogne sur Mer is a busy town with a charming medieval centre on the French west coast, from where Napoleon is said to have overlooked the Channel, aching to cross it and add the British isles to his empire. The invasion was never actually carried out, but in modern times it takes place in the opposite direction. Hordes of British tourists wielding the British Pound have all but taken over the picturesque parts of the city and its hinterland. They are welcomed and given a free reign. They are allowed to speak their own language. They are allowed to pay in Pounds without changing them into Euros first. A line has been drawn, though: in their wisdom, the French have put up signs all through the area, saying (in English, of course): keep right.

So far, we have seen all sorts of weather conditions. We have been soaking wet from incessant rain. We have seen the sun set the autumn foliage ablaze. We have woken up with morning fog or frost on our tent, and sat by a river in shirtsleeves at lunchtime, eating salads and sandwiches and getting a tan. We have felt a northern wind gently push us where we wanted to go. We have met southwesterly winds trying to push us back to Holland. And we have felt our legs, unaccustomed to riding with heavy gear in sloping terrain, gradually get stronger and more confident. All that in just over two weeks… We are now west of Paris, resting at a friend’s house for a day and enjoying their hospitality before continuing south for a rendez-vous with Charlotte’s parents.

One more thing, something that has been puzzling me. In Neufchatel en Bray, there was this restaurant, that had this menu, with these English translations… Part of me thinks this must have been done on purpose: like in Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel ‘Everything is illuminated’, whenever the dictionary allowed two very different translations, they have consistently picked the wrong one. But then again, would a serious-looking, conservative restaurant want to confuse the majority of its customers with something they cannot be expected to understand? These are some of the things on the menu:

Menu à 21 Euros: finely at 21 Euro; the French word menu also means small, fine, finely

Menu végétarien: small vegetarien

Soupe de poisson et sa rouille: fish soup and its rust

Coupe de glace au choix: cross of ice to the choice

Pavé de boeuf: paved stone of beef

Terrine du chef: pot of the chief

In Normandy

 

On our way

Setting out is easy. You simply close the door behind you, and you go. See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?

Well…

Charlotte closed the door behind her, then looked at her bicycle. And uttered a few expressions that can only be transcribe as: %$#@**^%!!! &&%$#@*&!!!

I sensed something was wrong. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I just closed the door and left the key inside, as planned. But my handlebar bag is still inside’.

I weighed our options for about two seconds. I like fast decisions and simple solutions.

‘You’ll have to take a train to Amsterdam tonight to get the bag when Hetty is at home’.

‘But it’s not in her apartment, it’s in the common part of the house, and it has everything I need’.

‘Everything?’

‘Everything. Passport, driver’s license, money, camera, phone. Everything.’ Clearly, my suggestion that she take a train in the evening was less than perfect.

We rang the doorbells of the other apartments that shared the same front door. Nobody was home.

Then Charlotte started ringing neighbours in other houses, on the off chance that someone might have the key to our door. One of the neighbours said he didn’t have the key. ‘But I’ve seen something on television that we could try’, he added as he went into his house, to emerge moments later with a wire coat hanger. He stuck that through the letterbox opening in the door, fiddled around for a few seconds, and… the door opened. We said, ‘Thank you’.

Holland can be very pretty

As we cycled south, the previously soggy weather cleared and made way for cold, clean air and brilliant sunshine. As if to say goodbye to us and leave a few good memories, the landscape showed its brightest colours, the wind gently pushed us in the back and motorists gave way where they didn’t have to. After two days, we arrived at Charlotte’s sister’s house, where we spent the night, and on the following day we had lunch with my aunt and uncle. Here, we changed our minds about our itinerary. We had planned to leave the Netherlands in the far southwest, but since the wind was from the north and the nearest border crossing point was only a few kilometers to the south, south was where we would go. That same day, we were in Belgium.

Today is a rest day, after four days of riding. The beautiful old town of Mechelen is worth exploring, and we’ll give our legs a rest, go over the bikes and wash our clothes. And sample some food that is likely to make us very happy.

Enjoying Belgian food

 

It is time

It rained.

And then it rained some more. Finally, the rain subsided, stopped altogether for a few minutes and began again, obviously very pleased with itself for having fooled us into believing that the worst was behind us. ‘It’ was having fun. We were only mildly amused.

During the first two days of our return trip from the north of the country to Amsterdam, it had rained only occasionally, but we were beginning to resent having to pack a wet tent every morning, knowing it would keep us dry during the night but would never get dry itself. Not in this kind of weather. Plus, for some reason grey skies, rain and falling temperatures tend to have a cumulative effect on the mind. The only way to rid yourself of the gloom that slowly but inevitably builds in those conditions is exactly what seems unattainable: sunlight, warmth, colour.

Nah, I’m exagerating. We were happy to be back on our bikes, happy to visit parts of our country that we hardly knew: forests, moors, marshes. Happy to be moving on our own steam and watching the country glide past us. Happy to watch sea birds float in the air currents that dykes pushed upward and sheep chew pensively on some of the last grass of the season. Happy to battle against the wind and hurl stupid remarks at it like: is that all you’ve got? It wasn’t, of course.

On the third day, the rain simply did not stop. Neither did we. The rain won. All of our waterproof, breathable fabrics began to admit defeat in the face of the incessant waves of attack by an opponent that could summon more troops, and more, and ever more, whereas the fabrics had only one defence. We began to get wet. We wondered how on earth we were ever going to get dry again.

Originally, the plan had been to find shelter for the night and carry on to Amsterdam on the following day. But when we realised that Amsterdam was only a few more hours away, we decided to push on. With renewed vigour, spurred on by the prospect of a house, a meal and dry clothes, we rode. We reached Amsterdam by nightfall, although when exactly the afternoon ended and night fell was difficult to tell.

So. We have tested our bikes and the rest of our gear. We have found a few things that will need to be adjusted, but generally, we are very pleased with the results. OK, so maybe we will not stubbornly continue riding when the rain does not stop. At the moment, the bicycles are being checked. Spokes will be tightened, tyres inflated to the correct pressure, bolts fastened, moving parts lubricated. Within a few days, we can set out again and head south this time.

South. Sunshine, warmth, colour. This is one (only one) of the reasons why I have always liked leaving this country. This past summer has been wonderful, but now, like the migrating birds we see flying south, I feel an urge to move on. It is time.

 

First kilometers

The bikes! The bikes! We have our bikes!

(Pant…) We have our bikes. It took six weeks for my Santos to be built, and Charlotte’s Snel was delivered to the shop seven and a half weeks after we had ordered it. Still, they were worth waiting for. What we have now is two state-of-the-art bicycles with goodies such as Rohloff internal gear shift mechanisms, Magura hydraulic brakes, Schwalbe Marathon XR tires (which the cycle-round-the-world community raves about) and Tubus carriers.

First kilometers

Alright, so now that we had taken posession of our new babies, what was next? Well, for starters, a test ride. We needed to get familiar with everything, find out if anything needed adjusting, and then take the bikes back to the shop for a final check-up. If we took all our gear we could check that, too, and go through a complete practice run of everything at once. But where do you go to find the harsh climatic conditions we may encounter later on and have therefore equipped ourselves for?

Only for bicycles

Let me take you back a month or so. We had just bought our tent and were very happy to have found in the MSR Mutha Hubba a good compromise of space and weight, quality and price. We pitched it in Charlotte’s parents’ garden and watched it weather the elements. When it rained, it stayed perfectly dry inside. In gusts of wind, it stood like a rock. According to the manufacturer, the pegs were suitable for all but the most extreme conditions. So there.

After a few particularly strong gusts, I went to check, and found… nothing. The tent was gone. It had been picked up by the wind and wedged firmly between a few trees nearby. It had suffered a few bent poles and a rip in the outer tent fabric. We’ve had the tent repaired in the meantime, and we have learned a thing or two. First, we’ve bought a few different pegs. And second, to find extreme conditions, we don’t need to look very far. Holland is extreme. Who would have thought that?

Dyke near Urk

So we bought a bicycle map of our country and found a suitable line that snaked through it, from Amsterdam to the far (…) northeast. We loaded our bikes and started out, guided by small road signs along the way.

Now, ours may not be the only country that has bicycle lanes, but I have never before seen bicycle trails that consist of narrow strips of bitumen or concrete cutting through forests and fields, only occasionally connected by roads with motorised traffic. In fact, I have never suspected that away from the roads, so much nature still exists, much less that it is accessible in such a convenient way. We have been taking a little time off from exploring the world, and are instead exploring our own country…

Saturated colours in the rain

It took us four days to reach the small town in the northeast where Charlotte’s parents live. During those four days we cycled through a great variety of terrain and weather conditions. From forests where the ground was covered with fallen leaves, chestnuts and acorns, to canals where herons stood guard and cormorants were drying their wings, to paddocks where even the bicycle paths were littered with cow dung, to dykes marking the boundary between polder and sea, to heather and evergreens, the landscape kept changing. The weather, too, played its part: now we found ourselves testing our rain gear, now we were greeted by a brilliant sun coming out from behind the clouds. We adapted to different ways of greeting people and heard accents change, even different languages spoken. All this in just four days of cycling? Yep.

Wow. We will take a short break and then cycle back to Amsterdam, have our bikes checked and then head south. Good things happening.

Curious Frisian horse

 

stuff

On a tram, we overheard a man talking into his cellphone: ‘Ah, you’re in Abu Dhabi!’. Someone else nearby was saying: ‘She asked me to go with her on holiday, but I’d really prefer to go to New York’.

To us Dutch, travelling overseas is nothing special; holidays are a basic human right and meeting Dutch travellers (many of them) in the remotest destinations is anything but surprising. We do love to travel, and our high standard of living and ample spare time enable us to do so. We’re doing OK, I guess.

Nothing new there, but what has surprised me recently is the number of well-stocked outdoorshops in our country. The number of them, the size of each one, the choices they offer belie the size of the country. Clearly, many of us like to spend their holidays outside and are prepared to dish out a lot of money on ‘accessories before that fact’.

So are we. In spite of what I have often said about only needing a passport and a credit card when going on a trip (especially to South-East Asia), while preparing ourselves for our bicycle trip, we are happily browsing through highly technical clothing and equipment that is the result of so much research that simple awe doesn’t do it justice. By the time we leave, we’ll have everything we need to deal with (well almost) anything.

While browsing, I am reminded of Sergei, in whose house I stayed for a few months last year.

In my mind’s eye I see him go into the Siberian mountains. He finds and collects berries and mushrooms, gathers firewood and boils water from a stream in a heavy steel pot to make a hearty soup that quickly makes us forget all our efforts and helps us to recover our strength. He traps or shoots wildlife, expertly skins it and broils the meat over the campfire. Where there is a stream or a lake, there is fish. Fish are friends. Fish are food.

Sergei knows how to survive out there, even in winter. But he is not a regular customer in outdoor specialty shops. Sergei heads into the mountains after having wrapped his feet in wool rags and stuck them in… gumboots. He wears clothing that looks as if he inherited it long ago from his father. Most of the straps and buckles of his backpack are broken. His knife, which sits on his belt in a homemade sheath, shows signs of many improvised repairs. He travels through the deep snow on his way to his cabin on skis that are no more than light wooden planks with leather strips to hold the feet in place. No skins to keep from sliding backwards when going uphill, and a stick, picked up along the way, acts as a brake where the terrain slopes down. Turning is impossible on those skis and the leather straps keep breaking. This is how he travels in the backcountry, quietly, cheerfully, even in adverse conditions.

Returning to reality, I go back to comparing the high tech goodies which, after a short interlude at the cash register, will instantly transform me from an average consumer into a professionally equipped explorer, ready to weather the elements and the big bad world. I smile. And continue shopping. After all, I am a child of our time, and of this country.

 

And now also in English…!

OK, so it’s going to be more work, writing both in Dutch and in English. But you see, we’ve been giving the address of our original, Dutch-language weblog to people who are interested in keeping up with what we are doing but whose Dutch is a bit too limited to read it.

‘But you can always look at the pictures’ was beginning to sound a bit lame, and having given up trying to convince non-Dutch speakers that ours is the language of the future and that now is the time to start learning, there seemed to be three options open to us, or rather: to me, since I am doing the writing :

- Continue to write in Dutch only. Hardly a solution, more like denying that a solution is needed. Easiest option. Tempting…

- Carry on in English only. Not fair to our core audience. All ten of them. Although, to be honest, most of them could easily read my English. So maybe that’s not the whole story. To be very honest, I like writing in Dutch!

- Begin writing both in English and in Dutch. More work, plus it has already been suggested that entries in many other languages would be a welcome addition, including languages we don’t speak (yet). Still, if we draw the line here and limit ourselves to two languages, we can easily double the number of our readers. An audience of twenty? Mind-boggling. Let’s do it.

Near Abondance, 14 Sept 2009

Now, here, in a nutshell, is what is happening at the moment: we got married in Holland earlier this month, we then spent ten days in the French Alps (alternating walks in the mountains, visits to old friends and stuffing ourselves with the local Abondance and Tomme cheeses) and are planning to leave Holland on our new bicycles in a few weeks to head for the Far East. See, initially we had thought we’d take the bikes back to Thailand with us on the plane and then start pedalling. And then we changed our minds.

But before going into more detail about now, let me try to summarize the past two years.

In 2007, Charlotte summed up what I had felt for a long time when she said to me: ‘Why don’t you quit your job and start travelling, it’s what you want to do’. I gave it some thought (about two seconds) and said, ‘OK’. I hadn’t realized that she had not meant it entirely literally… She had no wish to do what she was suggesting to me. But she had said it. And thus ended a career that had spanned twenty-five years. From then on, instead of sitting at the controls of a Boeing 747 and flying from point A to point B while observing everything in between from 12 kilometers up and without having the time to appreciate point A or point B, I was going to go back to what I had done many years earlier, I was going to travel.

Papua, eastern Indonesia

Two years have passed since, two years that were spent in Asia, mainly diving, studying languages and generally getting rid of twenty-five years of accumulated jetlag. Charlotte took unpaid leave, enabling us to spend the first five months together, before she went back to work and to her appartment in Amsterdam. We travelled through peninsular Malaysia and Borneo, then spent a month in the Philippines and two months in Indonesia, before ending that period together in Thailand. We dived at spectacular sites, such as Sipadan and Mabul, Apo Island, Ambon and Raja Ampat, became familiar with a myriad of cuisines in this part of the world that has to be heaven for foodophiles (well, except the Philippines…) and thoroughly enjoyed the leisurely pace of our lives.

During a festival in Okazaki, Japan

After Charlotte had gone back to her job as an air hostess, I spent some time in Malaysia and then went to Japan to study Japanese for three months at a language institute. She and I still saw each other occasionally for a whole 24 hours in Osaka, whenever Charlotte managed to get a flight there. During her holiday we teamed up again in Malaysia to dive at Perhentian Island. Here, while snorkelling, we found ourselves in the middle of a school of small fish that came to us for relative safety, while needle fish waited for a chance to strike just meters away, and a small reef shark passed underneath us, waiting for something to happen. We swam to the water’s edge and sat on a rock, still overwhelmed by the scene we had just witnessed. I asked Charlotte to marry me, and she said yes even before I had finished.

She returned to work again, and I flew to China to take the train to my next destination, passed a short stint in Mongolia on the way, and ended up in Irkutsk, Siberia, to study Russian at the Linguistic University for one semester. Living with a host family that took me camping and hiking and included me in everything they did made this a truly memorable experience. It was at this time that Charlotte took the plunge and quit her job to come join me in my travels. She still had doubts about this decision, but the most important step had been taken. There was never any doubt in my mind: by then, I was convinced that this was the kind of life I wanted to continue to live, and I wanted her to live it, too. Easy for me to say, I know…

Just finished teaching English to Thai children

We spent a few months in Thailand (mainly in the north), went diving around India’s Andaman Islands for a month and a half, and then returned to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to be trained as English teachers, a qualification that may come in handy in the future. We then flew to Holland for two months. Having bicycles made for the next stage of our trip would take about six weeks and test-riding them another two. While in Holland, we got married on what was truly a beautiful day. We have been totally spoiled by many. And we could not resist spending some time in the alpine region on the Franco-Swiss border in which we both have grown deep roots.

Sooo….. that takes us back to now. It may take me a while to set up this version of our weblog, do come back from time to time to see what’s new.

Welcome, venerable non-Dutch speakers!