Day 26 – Big Day to Rotterdam

It was another lovely night’s sleep in a real bed, curtailed at 6:30am as we did our final packing and made our instant coffee over the camp stove in the hotel room. We were off and riding by 8am, just as it started to rain.

We cycled through our last section of Belgium, where we had a morning waffle with Nutella, before entering The Netherlands. We also had a very muddy closed section, that we decided to cycle through anyway because we couldn’t figure out the detour, and both of our bikes became coated in muck. Later in the morning Viki had a scary encounter, where a car honked at her and passed aggressively close, because she was riding in the car lane when there was a cycle lane right beside. She had a big rant about all humanity, but became incredibly diligent at cycling in the dedicated cycling lanes for the rest of the day. By the end of the day she was in love with the Netherlands cycling network (northern Belgium was quite similar).

We stopped for lunch at 95km – the most we’ve ever cycled before lunch! We updated our sandwiches in line with the new country we’d arrived in and chose Gouda as our cheese of choice. Delicious!

We pressed on to reach our 150km target, leaving only 70km for our ride to Amsterdam tomorrow. There was an absolute downpour for a while and we were both completely drenched. By the end of the day a rainbow came out and the rain came to an end.

We’re now camped in a bit of a muddy patch hidden behind some trees by a relatively busy road of Rotterdam. We’re looking forward to an early arrival in Amsterdam tomorrow, where we’ve booked another hotel.