Emufarm
Clinton Smith Joined: August 6th 2007
Logged in: November 4th 2008
Logged in: November 4th 2008
It's a long story.
I'm biking from Amsterdam to Stockholm.
It's a long story.
Travel Blog Posts
Well, the biking is pretty much over, 1300km in 13 days, a bit of a sore knee. I'm in Stockholm, couldn't bike all the way from Goteborg as planned but took a train to the Gota Canal, stayed with Elsa there and biked along it , then a trian for the last section to Stockholm before leaving my bike outside stockholm station (most trains and buses won't take bikes here, its crazy) and spending the night in Uppsala with an old german friend of mine (he is sad he can't come to estonia, espacilly when I told him about some of the girls that will be coming, but he has to fly to srilanka to visit his aid worker girlfriend)... he propsed an alternative plan whereby I would take a 3 euro ferry to the islands ... read more
It rained today, a lot, and for the first time I didn't get where I was planning to go... it all went wrong near a wee town with the hilarious name of Angered. Got off the ferry ok, and found the bike signs for my distination (the also hilariously named Trollhattan), no worries, for the first 15km at least, then the road parallel to the multilane motorway disappeared, and the signs seemed to indicate one is meant to bike along the shoulder of the open speed motorway, which is obviously pretty bloody dangerous but also illegal in every coutnry I've been to so far ( and accoridng to the Swedes I spoke to, illegal here too), so I spent the next two hours in the rain biking up bloody great hills and going down agian looking ... read more
Turns out to be bloody hard. Its 97km by autobahn from bremen to Hamburg, 150km by the bike route, what they don't tell you is that half that route will be unsealed tracks between feilds as you are led between every small, identical town along the way... this can be a little frustrating, like when I had been biking for over an hour, covered 20km of some rough ground after leavinf Zeven, where I had stayed overnight, and came across an intersection between my route and another path to Zeven, distance 8km... but then, that might not have really been 8km... the Germans seem to enjoy givign you a distance that is probalby the direct distance, not the roundbout route they are goign to lead you on... for a while I thought my bike computer might ... read more
If you're ever biking to Zeven from Bremen don't take the the shorter route at the intersection, I know its tempting but follow the sign that poitns to your utliamte desitination - Hamburg... the other route goes through the forest on sand and mud, you will fall off for teh first time and be faced with the prospect of trying to buy oil for your chain in smalltown germany. Also, I had another funny thing - on the kustenkanal its suddenly flet like an insect bit me at the bottom of me bum, once or twice, and then another couple of stings in my lower thighs - upon inspection I've decided they weren't insects biting but wee ligaments snapping.... well, it made me laugh.... read more
It has been brought to my attention that my blog ha not contained sufficent numbers of 'funny bits' for the punters who are reading for a cheap thrill, so here are four= 1 Biking along kustenkanal I suddenly, involuntarily, burst into song.... into song in german. The song went 'Ich bin ein auto/...' fortunately for the world I stopped at that one line but the presence of german and dutch all around me is obivously having an effect, not only does it mke me burst into song but my mind plays little snippets of german sounding words as I bike 'ich, isch, und, etc' 2 When I went to the bed and breakfast on the first night I introdued myself as Clint and the litle old lady introduced herself as 'Frau Memblick' (well, something like that). ... read more
I rose early to get the hell out of the Netherlands by midday. after going through that star-shaped fort I showed some of youse. I was nearly at the fort when my back tyre blew. no worries, got a spare tube, except the store in ny had sold me tubes with th e wrong valve. no worries, kind woman takes me back to the nearest town to the cycle shop, except he's on vacation of course. no worries, I can fix the blown tube with me patch kit and a bucket of water supplied by the lovely ladies at westerwede radio (I otld them I would say that) who were womanning a stand at the town fete. Tyre fixed, only two hours lost, except i'm nowq someting of a town hero, the kiwi cycling from amsteradm ... read more
The 9th sucked. I had no couchsurf place to go to in groningen and since I was there by 2pm, I decdied to press on further along my route and stay in a hotel, problem was I couldn't find a hotel that was open. Unbeleivably, many hotelliers go on holiday in August, the busiest tourist season, what the hell is worng with them? its like a bottel store owner deciding to go on vacation around New Year's... so anyway, an hour's circling around a city with the lovely name of Hoozegard, all the time thinking I could have used this time to press on with my route, and finally got a hotel. Oh, I have telemetry on my bike computer now (when I noticed it had come on I literally said outloud 'hey, telemetry' I know ... read more
The plan for today was simple - bike to the nearest town, do my interenet stuff, bike north to the longest dyke in the world (that may not actually be true, but its really long) cross it and then on to Leeuwarden - about 90km, but today was the day I learnt about the difficultues arising from a flat countryside and the dutch economy with signs. I got to Memblik no worries but the internet store was closed, ok, so lets head north - hmm, no cycle signs for cities to the north, just these ones directing you to numbered intersections on biek routes (only useful if you have the map with the numbers - I tried to get it in Amsterdam but nobody had heard of it). so, a lot of backforwad and forward through ... read more
So, appearently, the way a blog works is I keep on making entries then people stop emailing me hassling me to find out whatäs happening - so Iäll make some backdated ones now. You may notice that Iäve got ä instead of ' most of the time here and sometimes mix y and z, that's becuase Iäm using a german keyboard´- harden up. So, After a full day in Amsterdam, I was off - heading north towards the longest dijk in the world , first day a short one to get myself into it. Had lunch in the comically named Hoorn, full of 400 yearold buildings leaning at bizaare angles - earthquakes clearly not a major risk. I liked Hoorn until it stole my MP3 player - I looked everywhere in that town for it, recovering ... read more
Amsterdam has lots of canals, people, and tall people who look like Kees. There is also lots of dog poo and cannabis - hence the title of the previous entry.... read more
