RatN – Day 6 – North Holland

Today’s route has us dropping down  along the Markermeer into eastern Amsterdam and then heading back north east up the coast into some very tourist-heavy regions of the Netherlands.

It started out pretty chill, with breakfast in the room from careful shopping the night before. Six days in, we’ve started to develop a routine. We wake up at 5:30 am, which we’ve discovered is the time to wake up for us if we want to leave by 8:00 am. Mornings are a whole thing… Although, for this trip we prepared by completely cutting out coffee/caffeine and it’s really helped us avoid the sleepy afternoon times and kept our mornings a bit simpler.

We checked out and then rolled through a still-sleeping Lelystad to get us back to the point where we left the official race route.

We were pleasantly surprised that our finishing headwind from the night before had shifted to a slight tailwind this morning, so we had a nice ‘n easy 40km to start as we made our way towards Amsterdam. Unfortunately, this also meant that we would have a headwind again pretty quickly.

After a quick mid-morning snack near Almere, we continued towards Amsterdam and came across an American couple in Muizen doing six weeks of self-supported touring. We chatted with them for a bit, as our routes coincided, then we found ourselves stopped at a drawbridge before we parted ways. Drawbridge stops are an invaluable social construct on bikes, I guess!

We were in and out of Amsterdam quickly and headed up the coast. It was slow going but not oppressive. There was enough variety in the route to keep us sand, and the sunshine felt good. This was the first (and likely only) day that we started off in shorts.

Plugging away, we stopped for lunch and supplies in Volendam, which is directly adjacent to Edam (where the cheese is from). Speaking of cheese, we’ve been able to find a lot of vegan cheese options that match all the dutch classics. Our favorite is a mild white cheese with cumin seeds.

Liz rolls her bike up the stairs. Handy!

At Volerdam we began to run into some issues. The route had us going through a very congested area with all sorts of shops and restaurants. This town had dozens of bus loads of tourists and they were all headed the same direction as us, under the leadership of tour guides waving numbered flags. Not at bike pace or even normal walking pace. Super frustrating, but we were aware that we were part of the problem too.

Finally we made it through, only to find that our route was closed due to massive reconstruction and we’d have to backtrack and find a way around.  Rather than belabor the point, let me say that three times on our ride today we had to make major excursions inland because the road we were supposed to take was closed. These all cost us time and mental+physical energy but it’s part of the adventure of bike packing.

Around 3:00 we stopped for afternoon lunch and seriously checked out our options for lodging. We ended up choosing Medemblik because there were very few hotel options further on the route and this city would give us a 150km/95 mile day. We were happy to have a shorter day that gave us time to find better food options. This stopping point puts us in a good position for tomorrow’s route which includes a national forest with sand dunes.

First dinner we had out on the road, shortly before we got to our hotel. Flour tortillas and vegan cheese slices on a random bench along the route. We’ve found it’s helpful to eat some food before hotel check-in so that you’ve got some fuel to handle the barrage of things that have to happen when you arrive.

Second dinner, an absolutely trash (but delicious!) American style pizza from a national chain called New York Pizza. It’s like how I remember Dominoes, which is also everywhere here.