Good times continued in Texel

---

After this we hoped on our bikes and continued riding the beautiful countryside of Den Hoorn. We made our way along the coast to De Koog. On the way to De Koog we rode past the wild Moorish looking sand dunes and through beautiful forest looking like places. De Koog is about 12km north of the port of Den Helder. You notice the abundance of hotels and campground riding into De Koog and away from it, which is probably of no surprise as its meant to be the main centre of tourism on the island (close to nice wildlife, a wooded forest type of reserve, oh and let’s not forget the sand dunes). Its located on the North Sea coast of the Island. At De Koog I unsuccessfully try to get Francis and Diana to try Herring (the Dutch specialty that daddio is so very fond of). I fail but I do get Diana to try crocket and French fries (two other Dutch specialties). OH and the fries come with the Dutch mayonnaise that I am in love with. Diana likes it but insists the tartar sauce is better. Francis eats the fish (not the Herring but we get a mixed fish plate).
Then we go look for ice creams. Most of the places around seem to only have the McDonald’s soft serve type ice creams so we go to Lidl and get a 12 packs of mini magnums - that’s four ice creams each and we stuff our faces. Mmmmm.
After getting our ice creams we get back onto our vehicles and make our way to De Cocksdorp. The view along the route is probably my favorite. Again rugged dunes on our left but we are met with the tulips rows on our right. Although most of the tulips have been cut down, you ride past small strips of bright red beautiful tulips or bright pink ones. They look beautiful - and really cute when we (especially Isabella) are photographed in them!

Its 5pm and the fiets store (that is storing Isabella’s pram) closes at 7pm. De Cocksdorp is still another 3km away but the port is 22km away. We make a quick executive decision to head back to the port - this time we cycle through inland as it looks a bit quicker on the map, and it is after all a new route. We cycle past the small airport of Vliegveld, which is also apparently an international airport. We see a whole bunch of sky divers touching down (Francis actually noticed a few in the air that also opened their chute). We peddle on, past sheep fields, cow fields and a couple of roundabouts until we make it at 6:40pm, 20 minutes before closing time to the bike lockers. We retrieve our things and Isabella waves goodbye to the bike people. As I’m in the market for a bike (Jan’s axel has gone to the cooker and front tyre is flat - and I’m sick of doing repairs on him) I ask the bike locker place how much they sell these bikes second hand. They tell me €200 so I make a mental note to look elsewhere and thank them for the use of their bikes. We then get back onto the ship and watch mainland Netherlands approach.

Back on land we get bus 33 back and then a train to Sloterdijk. We head home do a brief shopping run then I make some Burritos before we have some White willow (weed) and then go to bed.

2 May 2009

---

Photos

The church in the first town we stopped
Diana and Francis