Witness the fitness

Hello!

I feel bad for writing this on my own, but we're apart for most parts of this stay in Great Britain and it needs to be written.

We're back in the UK. I'm currently at LXV Books, 65 Roman Road, London. Sally is in Milton Keynes.

To begin with, I'll just run through where we went after Hamburg.

We cycled to Zeven, a nice town between Hamburg and Bremen, where we enjoyed the sun at a non chlorinated, outdoor swimming pool and camped at a nice camp site for a reasonable price, unlike in Neustadt. The prices have varied a lot, between €7/night to €23.70/night and £18/night (for two adults in one small tent). More money doesn't necessarily mean tidier premises or cooking and showers included, it simply means the owners are greedy and aware that people will pay it. Shame on you.

Anyways, off to Bremen the following day, where we decided to cheat once again, so we stayed at the city's camp site, located by the University and jumped on a train in the morning that took us to Leer (small town at the edge of Germany - train ticket prices went up drastically as you cross the border of Holland). From Leer we cycled to (this town needed to be looked up on Google maps :) Slochteren, where we had to cycle around for a good hour to find the camp site (which wasn't the one we'd started out looking for). The Dutch roads are edged by few signs and they aren't easy to understand either. Still, we have to say they have a well developed cycling network and should inspire city and road plans for countries like England and Sweden.

Then through Groningen, camped (illegally and inexpensively) at a road side stop and parking space in Oranje Would (orange woods) outside Herenveen. That day we'd set a new record: 109km in one day. The following day we cycled 124km. Down to the coast to Urk, where we found out the ferries didn't start running until a few days after, but we had a nice fish & chips by the harbour, where we had a dip in the, surprisingly, fresh water for dessert. Down to Lelystad, cycled over what we were informed was a ditch, which it clearly wasn't. It was simply a man made road built on water, so a different kind of bridge, which ran 32km over to the other side and in to Enkhuizen. The last two-three k's the air was so full of flies we almost choked. They were in our mouths, eyes (even though we were wearing shades), ears and covered our whole bodies. We'd cycled far in two days and were ahead, so we decided to stay on the nice camp site next to Enkhuizen for two nights. We watched football and did nothing.

Well rested we went to Amsterdam on a Saturday, foolishly without booking any accomodation. I, Carl, should've known it's a city you book in advance since the last visit in 2007. We side tracked through Zaanstad and had an ice cream by the massive wind mills. It started raining, so we rolled into the Dam late Saturday with wet clothes, nowhere to stay, the first puncture of the trip, to find it full of people in white who were all attending the biggest indoor party in Europe (white sensation - guess the dress code) or passing through after watching the 180 inhuman cyclists set off on le Tour from Rotterdam. Man did our moods drop. Fixing a puncture under the roof of Amsterdam's central station on a Saturday evening is something I think every man should do in his life at least once. We'd gathered that there wasn't a bed in any of the city's hostels and we don't like hotel rates, so I walked into a internet cafe and looked up camp sites. There's two quite central, and I'd definately recommend it to the cheap traveller, a tent and a couple of nights there is even cheaper than a dorm bed.

The Vliegenbos camp site was, naturally, the most expensive camp site we'd visited (€23.70/night) and it had UV lights in the toilets (you probably all know why, but to make sure you get the picture: UV lights makes white shine and other colours fade, so it's cool in clubs and in toilets it has the function of hiding your blue veins so you can't inject drugs). We stayed there for three nights and it worked out fine in the end, it was a five minute ride to the, free of cost, ferries to the city that ran every fifteen minutes.

One thing worth mentioning was all the mental football fanatics who inhabit Denmark, Germany and Holland; they are everyone, and they celebrate in a wild fashion. It's all about wearing the colours on the streets, putting flags over the entire hood of your car, getting very, very drunk and then loudly, parade the streets into the early hours on a Tuesday.

We saw central Amsterdam, we went on a canal boat ride, we drank Amstel bier, we walked, we avoided any confrontation with the intense camp site owner and then, on the third day, we left.

Cycled to Den Haag, where we walked on the beach. Then we kind of left the camp site, forgetting to pay, and upon realisation, did nothing about it. Naughty. We cycled the last 15km to Hoek van Holland in the morning, got on our ferry to Harwich, arrived, got a train to London and that was Wednesday 7/7. One week ago.

On Saturday we cycled to King's Cross St Pancrass, where we got confused like everyone else, nearly missed our train to Chesterfield, where we cycled out to a place called Unstone Grange, where the lovely Lucy and Ben became Mr and Mrs, fed us their wedding cheese cake (yes, it's true, the cake was Shropshire blue, a Brie, a Cheddar and two more gorgeous cheeses), had us camping and let us party all night. Thank you and best of luck you two!

Yesterday and today I'm selling books at LXV Books, a nice second hand book shop which certainly needs all PR it can get, cos it's f'in empty here!! Lena came and had tea and cake with me today. Lazy, fat Carl is having those cakes for lunch.

The incredibly fit and hard working Sally is in Milton Keynes with The World Famous (http://www.theworldfamous.co.uk/) and in her text earlier today, she explained it's a weird and boring city. Now I'm really psyched about to going up there for Friday's fireworks display. For you readers in or from MK, don't be offended, prove me wrong and give me some recommendations for fun stuff to do.

I'm done now, it's was quite a long one. Pleased with myself, indeed.

Just want to say thanks to Anne, Joe, Paul, Ollie, Andreas, Amy, Kris and all your pest pets for letting us crash on your floor and/or putting up with having our smelly stuff around! LOVE YOU!

Going back to Facebook skyveing and the Stockholm Symphonic Orchestra on radio 3.

Ta'

PS! Shiet, forgot to write an explanation to the title. Just wanted to let you know the knees are starting to heal and we're ace and cycle a lot longer now than we used to. Witness the fitness.