RatN – Day 8 – Schoorl to Wassenaar

Here’s something for you to consider: did we bring a bike lock (or two?) on our trip?

The answer? Not really. We brought a very lightweight (something as thick as a USB cable) combination lock for situations where we want to discourage the most casual of thieves. We did not bring a lock that we would trust unattended for any length of time because it would simply be too heavy. Instead, mid-day grocery and supply runs were handled by either Liz or myself but never both. At hotels, we either brought the bikes to our room or we stored the bikes in some sort of secure storage location provided by the hotel. Sometimes it was a supply closet, once it was in the corner of the restaurant, usually we’re putting our faith in someone who we don’t know.

The reason I bring this up is that last night our hotel rented us a €5 private lockable bike box. It had plenty of room for both bikes and also had a power outlet for customers with e-bikes. It was basically a small, private garage and it was great because we had easy access to the bikes but we felt as if the bikes were completely secure. I hope more hotels begin to offer this service!

We left our hotel in Schoorl and headed back north through Groet to retrace our steps through the national park along the coast. We decided to add a few km and avoid the exact section we used to extricate ourselves yesterday, because it involved a lengthy and sandy detour around submerged bike paths.

The wind… was mercifully subdued.

We made our way down the coast, enjoying rolling hills, gentle morning sunshine and pleasant temperatures.

It’s Saturday and as the morning progresses and we head further south, we see more and more cyclists, walkers and runners. We take our time and plenty of snack breaks,  heading into an increasing headwind that never becomes oppressive.

After about 50km, we enter the harbor area of IJmuiden. We zig-zag through an industrial zone that also has dedicated and consistent bike infrastructure. I’m still amazed at the level of dedication to cycling infrastructure this country has.

With that out of the way, we were almost immediately stopped by a second lock. Thankfully, This one resolved itself quicker. Good thing we’re not on the clock or anything!

At this point we had about 50km to go before we would be close to Corey and Jen’s place. We had a tough decision to make. We could continue with the race for one or two more days, knowing that we could not possibly finish before we had to make our preparations to fly home, or ‘scratch’ and spend the rest of the weekend hanging out with our friends.

It was a difficult choice because we were still enjoying being on the road, but we also felt like we’d accomplished everything we’d really set out to do, and then some.

Before we had the chance to act on our decision, we ran into one last dot watcher in the seaside town Katwijk aan Zee. She flagged us down yelling “Are you Ben and Elizabeth? Race Around the Nederlands?!” Why yes, we are! We swung around and chatted with Wil (short for Wilhelmina) for about 15 minutes right in the middle of the street. Her son had done the RatN gravel edition last year (4th place!) and that got her interested in dot watching. Of course she knew much of our story, including our difficult day yesterday, all by watching our dots. It’s such an interesting aspect of participating in the race that we hadn’t considered. We told her we were scratching in just a few km and she congratulated us for making it as far as we did. We thanked her for coming out to support two random people from another continent who she’ll never see again. Then we parted ways.

At about 1150km and 8 days into the race course, we did end up scratching. Our total mileage, including both planned and unplanned detours, was over 1200km or 750 miles.

There will be plenty of time for reflection, but I guess it’s safe to say that Liz and I are extremely proud of ourselves and each other for this accomplishment. We wouldn’t change a thing.