All the forecasts predicted different weather today. And none of them were right. In the event, it turned out grey in the morning, fine over lunchtime, and drizzly from the afternoon – but, pleasingly, with a helpful tailwind all day as I headed northeast along the Netherlands’ dreamily good cycle infrastructure.
I headed out from central Maastricht on good signed segregated paths through industrial estates of car showrooms, builders’ warehouses and pumping engineers. Much of the Netherlands is like this. Not exactly bucolic. It’s what you might call a ‘built environment’, in the same way that a rubbish dump is a ‘recycling facility’.
I climbed a hill (yes, a hill) up past Maastricht Aachen Aairport on a country road with the right balance of bike-lane-width to car-lane-width, ie about 9 to 1.
After the downhill from the airport, it was then all main roads on the flat – with excellent cycle paths of course – through towns and past smallholdings and farms in between.
There was a variety of livestock on view in the trim, fenced-off squares of green: not just sheep, goats and cows, but also donkeys, wallabies and llamas.
I had lunch in Roermond, which I rode to from Liège a couple of years ago, so remembered where I could buy stamps for postcards and ‘I love you’ cards in Dutch.
I admired the cathedral, overlooked by a statue of the local man who designed Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, and enjoyed another architectural wonder: my multilayered chicken sandwich from Hema’s stall nearby for lunch.
Disposal of the wrapper from my sandwich was no problem thanks to the first blikvanger of the journey soon afterwards: a pathside net designed for cyclists to throw litter into without having to stop, like those mailbag collectors from interwar postal trains in England.
From here it was a couple of hours of wind-assisted, flat, stress-free cycling along excellent paths along the Maas valley to Venlo. I had to sit out a shower or two in bus shelters and entrances of furniture warehouses.
The centre of Venlo had a few scruffy, dodgy-looking men hanging around the centre, though to be fair one of them was me. I had a brief look at the functional-looking riverside path, with a mesh sculpture of a river-god pointing at something, perhaps showing me the way to my Warmshowers hosts for the night.
It then started to rain in earnest. I sat some of it out writing postcards in a lovely cafe, the Romershuis. It’s Venlo’s oldest private building, one of those step-gabled brick houses that look like de Hooch painted it yesterday.
The cappuccino could have been a still life all by itself: it came with a tot of something liqueur-like topped with whipped cream, a glass of water, a chocolate biscuit and a hand towel, all served on a wooden paddle. Not bad for €3.70. That barely buys a stamp for a postcard to England.
After a couple more rain-dodging stops, in the railway station and an Albert Heijn supermarket, I headed to my accommodation, a house on a quiet, woodsy edge of town with my lovely Warmshowers benefactors Jaap and Rie.
We swapped amusing cycling, travel and life stories over a glass of Albert Heijn’s finest bargain Malbec, they fed me heartily, and it was a delightful evening.
I like cycle touring.
Miles today: 50 miles
Miles since Drielandenpunt: 75 miles