The background story

This year I had a leading position and thought that I could take out vacation whenever I wanted.  That was not to be, since the head office in Oslo suddenly decided to distrubute an unexpected lot of decisions. This initiated a whole lot of work on our side, and I was the only one who could deal with it.  This was on a Friday.  I had been invited to a wedding on Saturday and held a plane ticket to Amsterdam on Monday morning when I was to start my vacation.

Hence I spent most of that weekend at work, except from the shortest possible wedding break and fewest hours of sleep possible.  I only had a few minutes spare to pack in the end, but expected myself to have enough experience to make this work out without problems...

20 June 1988

I got on the plane in the last minute.

The summer weather in Holland was nothing to boast about - thick fog, headwind and 14°C was what I had to deal with for the next 3 - 4 days.

I started by cycling west towards the beaches and the sand dunes, then veering north along the coastline.  In the evening I stopped briefly at Beverwijk to take a closer look at my map.  Dutch hospitality showed up in the shape of a young girl on her bike.  She stopped to ask me if she should show me the way to the local camping ground.  I accepted, and she rode in front of me to the local camping site, not even marked in my map.  It was a real nice one, with a lot of bush.  Small roads passed through the bush and offered access to secluded grassy fields each holding 2 - 4 tents.

All the shops had closed when I was about to unpack and find out what I had managed to bring along as a result of my last minute packing.  Long biking pants, my tooth brush and my sleeping bag were all found missing...

21 June 1988

I survived the night with spare clothes working as cover (it was cold night for summer in Holland).  Then it was time to go shopping.  The lady in the sport's store sold me a sleeping bag that she insisted was Norwegian.  I could tell that it was not, despite the viking helmet on the carrying bag.  On the other hand they sold Norwegian tooth brushes in the local grocery store - at half the price of what they charged for the same brushes in Norway!

My route continued northwards along the coast.  The headwind slowed me down, and the fog made sure that I didn't see much.  Later I found out that summer had finally struck Norway at the same moment that I left for abroad - newspapers told about the highest June temperatures ever recorded in Norway...

I stopped at Westerland (at the northern tip of the province Noord-Holland) to pitch my tent for the night.  The good news was that my new sleeping bag turned out to be of good quality.

22 June 1988

I could see from my map that I had Afsluitsdijk right in front of me.  I am not sure if this is a motorway bridge on a huge dyke or a huge dyke under a motorway bridge.  It was more than 30 km across, most of it dead straight.  I had to ride on a narrow bike path on the side of the motorway.  Now I was almost happy about the fog, since I could see just 100 - 200 meters ahead of me, thus being unable to get depressed by the visually never-ending straight.  The bad news was that the headwind got much stronger when out above the open sea.

Back on the mainland I set course for Heerenveen, for no other reason than having listened to numerous radio transmissions from big ice-skating events there in my childhood and youth.  Oh well, I think I saw a few on TV also.  I reached Heerenveen, found the ice skating rink and encircled it by bicycle before making a 90 degree turn towards northeast, now heading for Winschoten.

I had friends expecting me at Winschoten, but it was too far away to be reached in one day.  I found a camping site out in the middle of nowhere practically on the border between the provinces Overijssel and Friesland.

23 June 1988

This day I found a couple of real nice woods to bike through.  These were nice for two reasons.  They offered great protection against the ever present headwind, and there were nice bikeroads running through them.

I reached Winschoten at the end of a day without any kind of surprising events.

28 June 1988

The Sunday before I had witnessed a lot of the people of Winschoten go berserk in their cars.  They had a very noisy way of celebrating the Dutch team becoming European football champions.

Now I went for an evening ride in the neighbourhood of Winschoten.  The border with Germany was just a few canals away.  I came to the bordertown Nieuweschans, and was about to enter the highway to go through the border station.  Then I noticed a man at the other side of the intersection waving at me.  He was an elderly man on his bicycle, and I went across to find out what he wanted.  He couldn't speek a word of English, but I could understand "Duitsland?".  As I nodded, he got up on his bike and waved for me to follow.  After crossing through a couple of residential areas we came out on a large open field and the start of a bikeroad.  The man didn't want to ride any further, but he pointed to the bikeroad, and I followed his advice.  4 km later I arrived at Bunde in Germany, having seen no trace of pass- or customs control, border signs or a single car for that matter.

I then went south along the border on the German side.  I found a road crossing back intoto Holland.  It seemed to be a road for cars, but there were no cars on it.  Well, I rode out on it and came to a border station.  I was stopped and had to show my passport.  I was also questioned in detail about where I lived, where I came from and where I was headed.  The man inside the uniform was kind enough, and after a while he signaled that I could re-enter Holland and wished me a nice trip.  After getting back to Winschoten, I was told that I had crossed through a station not open to the public!

29 June 1988

Now it was time to enter Germany sort of permanently, and I chose a "safe" route (as contrary to "nice" or "illegal") through Vlagtvedde and the old castle of Bourtange.  It was a rather popular tourist attraction, showing how the Dutch had tried to keep the Germans at a canonshot's distance in former times.  Now everything was peaceful, but the surface consisted of very old cobblestones, and my bicycle complained terribly about my choice of roads.

The German side was less peaceful.  Not only did I have to read my map carefully not to ride into restricted areas (there was a lot of military land), but I was also repeatedly annoyed by fighter planes passing right above my head.  I quickly discovered that the sound of them could wear nerves thin in a minimum of time.

I crossed the river Ems, passed through the village Dörpen and crossed the main railway line running north-south.  Shortly afterwards the road passed under a high bridge with a very unusual shape.  It didn't seem to connect to anything, and from up above it must have looked like a rope to commit suicide with.  It was the test area for what might still become the next generation of highspeed trains.

My route went along roads with moderate car traffic, through villages separated by relatively large woods (for Germany).  The scenery was still fairly flat, although there were hills with names like Helkensberg and Barenberg alongside the road.  Non of these hills climbed to a height of more than 40 meters a.s.l. though.  However, on one occassion the road offered a downhill run, and in the middle of the downhill there was a sign poiniting towards a local camping site.  I made a very quick decision of spending the night there at Dötlingen, and managed to branch off in the last possible fraction of a second... 

 

30 June 1988

I left the woods behind shortly after Dötlingen, and now it was just to decide which road to enter Bremen on.  I chose the only one with a yellow colour in my map (yellow meant "Landesstraße", or B-road).  The others were marked in red (meaning "Bundesstraße", or A-road).  I came through villages like Heiligenrode and Stuhr.  The car traffic gradually increased, and I looked in vain for good alternatives.  After a while I could cross the river Weser though, and ride safely into the city centre of Bremen.  Here I was going to look up a friend who had invited me to stay for a few days.

 

5 July 1988

During my days in Bremen I had been riding through the park Bürgerpark several times, and discovered that it was connected to the open fields east of Bremen through a network of very nice bikeroads.  When leaving Bremen, I decided to do so via these bikeroads, although they were running in the opposite direction of where I wanted to go.  After completing a semi-circle to the south, I was able to return across the Weser at Achim.

I didn't want to backtrace, so I rode a lot due south this day.  I passed east of Diepholz and reached Lembruch at Dümmer See in the afternoon.  This lake was a popular recreational area with several camping sites to choose from.  I rushed into the first and hopefully best site, with a huge rainshower about to hit me.  I was unable to complete pitching my tent before it was wrecking down, and both the inside of my tent and parts of my equipment got soaked.

 

6 July 1988

Rain continued to fall off and on, and I wanted my tent to dry more or less properly before packing it down again.  This way it was already late in the day when I finally got back on my bike.

I passed Lake Dümmer on the northern side and found some nice roads through the woods to the west of the lake.  Then Osnabrück was in front of me, and normally I would have tried to buypass the city one way or another.  However, the next campingsite that I could find on my map was in Enschede, Holland, and that was a long way to go.  I decided that it would probably be quickest to go straight through the city.  I seemed to end up in the middle of the evening rush out of the city.  It's possible that I missed out on a nearby bikeroute, as I have hardly ever been hooted at so much by aggressive car drivers.  Well, I could not see any other route, and I am sure that cycling was permitted on this highway.

Southeast of Osnabrück I passed through some hillier terrain, with hills pointing several hundred meters into the air.  This was the northern end of the Teutoburger Forest.  My speed was affected from the climbing, and Enschede was still a long distance away.

After some 20 km I had penetrated the wooded hills and reached the flats on both sides of the river Ems and the Ems-Dortmund canal.  My speed picked up again, but it was still a long way to go.  I started counting the hours until it would get dark.

Reaching Steinfurt I turned onto a highway (Bundesstraße 54) as a final attempt to reach Enschede before dark.  A gentle tailwind helped pushing me forward, and I made a good speed.  I crossed the border into Holland at dusk, and 20 minutes later I wheeled into Enschede.

 

7 July 1988

The weather was unsettled yet again, but I had consulted my map and concluded that it didn't matter.  Ironically (after all the efforts to reach Enschede on the previous day) I was now ahead of schedule to my planned meeting with an old friend in Amsterdam.  I was not supposed to reach Amsterdam until the evening of the 9th.  I then decided to make a couple of detours to include the provinces Limburg and Flevoland.

I first rode southwest to Haaksbergen, and later south and southeast to Winterswijk.  It looked like a good idea to cross into Germany once more, but I had plenty of time, so I decided to spend the night in Winterswijk.

 

8 July 1988

I found some nice backroads taking me to Rees in Germany.  This was one of the few places where I could cross the river Rhine.  Here I was just 30 km or so north of the outskirts of the Ruhr region, but fortunately I couldn't see any heavy industrial plants, huge mines, badly polluted areas or the heavy traffice normally found at such places.

After crossing Gocher Heide, I returned to Holland for the last time on this trip near the town Gennep.  An OK bikeroad was running along the highway into Nijmegen from there.

North of Nijmegen I had to consult my map again, and chose to stay overnight at the camping site at Otterlo, on the entrance to the Hoge Veluwe National Park.

 

9 July 1988

To get to the province Flevoland I had to bike through a mainly wooded terrain from Otterlo to Harderwijk.  There I was provided with access to Flevoland via a bridge.  I was told that Flevoland was the youngest Dutch province - in more ways than one.  Most of it was under the sea level, and had been developed from a former sea floor in fairly recent years.  Hence there were no cities to bypass, and definitely no old towns to explore.  I saw barely any towns or villages at all, just wide areas of farmland with a number of canals running through.

I left Flevoland at Muiderberg.  Now there was just a short distance left into Amsterdam, with steadily increasing traffic.  I was going to find a street address pretty close to the city centre.  Cities with more than a million inhabitants were never among my favourite biking grounds, but Amsterdam was not too bad.  I had sort of expected a lot of bikeroads and bikelanes there, but didn't see many.  On the other hand there were plenty of attractive backstreets running along canals, and I had no problems finding my way through the city.

 

11 July 1988

My flight was scheduled quite early, so my most important task was to get up early enough.  I reached the airport around 2 hours early, so that worked well.

I had never before experienced any problems when wanting to bring my bicycle along on a plane, but the lady that I was repeatedly directed to at the airport, had decided to be an outstanding exception.  I was sent from one desk to the other (to buy a box to put the bike into - which nobody had cared about as I came in the opposite direction).  After more than 1½ hours at the airport I had still not managed to check in.  Confronting the difficult lady with my intentions of reporting her to the airport authorities if I - or my bicycle - did not get on the plane in time, made her all of a sudden change her attitude.  As a miracle both I and my bicycle got on board the right plane back to Stavanger.