Travels with Claud

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Day 8

20160824

Groningen to Arnhem



A strangely subdued kind of day, intermingled with the odd foolishness. After the debacle of the hair dryer and the socks, I imagined I’d get my hotel laundered tee-shirts and shorts back fully dried and ironed. No, chance, they made a worse job of it than I did. Everything came back damp and wrinkly, which is a bit of an issue when it’s stuck in a pannier all day.

Last night I passed a bike shop on the way home from dinner in a medieval square in the ‘centrum’, they’re like corners shops at home. The bike shops that is, not the medieval squares.

I bought a new bell, with a compass set into it. I’ve seen all the serious touring bikes here with this device, but never seen one in a bike shop in England. Anyway, before setting off for the station to catch the train south I unscrewed my old ‘non-compass’ bell, and attached my new ‘compass’ bell. This will work a treat with the knoops system, I can’t wait to try it out. As long as you move roughly in the right direction you can be a bit more laid back about specific knoop points. Such simple pleasures for the analytical mind!

As far as I can tell there are no conductors on Dutch trains, and no exit barriers. You buy your ticket, then when you’re ready to board the train you swipe it past the relevant yellow & blue inter-city, or red and white sprinter, scanner. I guess there must be some kind of random checks to see if you’ve paid, I don’t know. I know certain people who might find the temptation not to pay altogether too much.

I decided to get the 11.16 train to Arnhem, for no other reason that I was bored with the ‘Mercure’. I’d had my breakfast fill and could see no point hanging about for the 12.00 checkout, even though I could officially avail myself of the free food, coffee, fruit juice and wi-fi. After a leisurely ride to the station I swiped my ticket, got on the Rotterdam train (change at Zwolle), and settled down to read Ruby Wax on my kindle. Only problem was when I looked in my rucsac the kindle was gone!

Damn, I must have left it in the hotel. I scoured my memory for thoughts of when I’d last seen it and managed to convince myself that I’d left it on the bedside table next to the telephone. I unhitched my bike from it’s harness, got off the train, unswiped my ticket and set off the 3km back to the hotel. Fortunately the Zwolle bound trains are every hour, so it was more of an inconvenience that a disaster. I got back to the Mercure, locked my bike up outside and thought, “you know, I’ll just check one more time it’s not in my backpack”. And whaddyaknow, as soon as I opened the bag there was the kindle staring right back at me, just where it should have been. I’ve no idea how that happens. I scoured that bag at the station and the device was not there! Perhaps Ruby is going to tell me.

The change at Zwolle was unremarkable, except that the change of trains meant moving up one floor to platform 10. Of course Dutch railways provide lifts for bikes and pushchairs; they also provide escalators for normal passengers, and the extremely foolhardy tourists who think they can mimic the locals. I saw this bloke swiftly manoeuvre his pannier loaded bike onto the escalator, escalate up with it, and effortlessly swing it off at the top. Easy peasy I thought, what a mistake! The escalator grabbed my bike, launched it up the stairway, chucked me on my arse, threw my bike off at the top and left me scrabbling around trying to prevent serious injury! The final ignominy was that the stair mechanism had somehow managed to rip the valve from the front inner tube, so now I had a puncture as well.

Luckily I was prepared for this kind of thing, and after having recovered my mangled pride, I unstowed my toolkit, changed the inner-tube and carried on. One hot, sweet, milky cup of coffee on the train ten minutes later and I was right as rain. Won’t be doing that again in a hurry! At least I managed to retrieve my snazzy yellow dust cap.

Bit of disaster on the Arnhem accommodation front, but more of that tomorrow.

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