Edam to Stroe

A hard day out today. It was a very windy day :( I headed north along a dyke, but the road is below the dyke so to see the sea I stopped a couple of times to have a look. It was very choppy and murky. There was a swimming area at the camping ground, I can't imagine swimming there. There were quite a lot of cyclists about, I was passed while stopped by one large group.

I had a break in the town of Hoorn where I had a slice of pizza and a mediocre hot chocolate. It was warm though which was important. Technically it is not that cold as it is still 20 C. It was at this point that I had a change of plan. My original plan was to head north west and go over to the west coast. However the wind was just too strong, it would have been agony. So I decided to head north. There were some quite nice stretches of cycle path here and when heading even slightly easterly it was amazingly fast. However once you were west or even due north it could be very hard work.

I lunched at Medemblik, it was getting cold and I needed something to warm me up. It is a nice town and I stopped at a Pannenkoeken place and had, obviously, an omelet with tea :) It was all lovely and warming. I sat for a while, the sun was out, contemplated staying, and then decided to ride on. I made it about 300 m before it started to rain! I went immediately to a bus shelter (reminiscent of Switzerland in 2003). The temperature had plummeted to 16 C so I put on my Goretex and long finger gloves and then sat there for a while. 2 more heavy squalls came through the town and then it seemed to clear so I risked it. About 500 m later it was about to rain, it started spitting, and then it moved on past me. Phew.

In the end I made it to Den Oever, but by then I was definitely running out of puff. There was an enormous hill on the way, a 7m climb up an overpass of the A7. Very tiring :) I got to town eventually found the camping site and … sniff, it was closed. I rode on, in a circle, back to the main town area where I had seen a hotel and came across the tourist info. She pointed out a camping ground in Stroe, about 4 Km's away. Sigh.

The ride to Stroe was fully into the wind and quite a struggle. Fortunately there were lots of trees which gave some protection. I eventually crawled into the camp site at about 4:30 pm. After setting up the tent and having a shower I had a read and somehow managed to fall asleep before eating. Fortunately I awoke at 9:15 pm for some dinner and then passed out again.