THE NETHERLANDS – TRAVEL IN A TIME OF CORONAVIRUS

Or… All the Gear and No Idea.

How to travel in a time of coronavirus? Well, pretty much one does not. That said, when you have already made plans and upended your life, it becomes necessary to go somewhere (read: anywhere). So, two months later than anticipated and in an entirely different destination than intended, we left Abu Dhabi and began cycle touring (kind of) in the time of lock-downs and quarantines. Due to Tom being a Dutch citizen, we were able to head to the Netherlands notwithstanding the COVID situation. After much anxiety, packing up our lives, finding a special flight during the border closures, finishing work, getting a taxi during curfew in Abu Dhabi (worth a mention because this was, in fact, pretty challenging), getting all of our junk to the airport and getting all masked up – we managed to get on a plane and land in the Netherlands.  After four hours spent getting through immigration, reconstructing our bicycles, loading them up with all our gear for the first time, we were finally ready to go!

With much excitement, I got on my bike, now laden with 20kg of gear and having a combined total weight of circa 40kg and which, until this time, I had only rode around Abu Dhabi occasionally and had never tried out geared up before.   With no further ceremony, I confidently placed my butt on the seat and took off, only to (very promptly) keel over side ways and be left staring up at Thomas from the pavement outside of Schiphol airport somewhat confused that I was not, at that moment, pedalling victoriously in the direction of our hotel. Auspicious beginnings for sure. In any event, after a few preliminary turns around the parking lot, we managed to cycle the 8km to our accommodation, have dinner and promptly pass out.

It was quite a jolt coming from Abu Dhabi (which we had, until that time, thought was pretty relaxed about the lock-downs and coronavirus generally) and turning up in the Netherlands, where they definitely were not taking things anywhere near as seriously as in the Emirates. Our first evening was spent at a hotel outside of Amsterdam where they were serving drinks to passersby and where non-guests were arriving in their boats on the canal to hang out. It seemed quite surreal considering everything in the Netherlands was still officially closed at the time.

Due to the coronavirus restrictions, we wanted to base ourselves somewhere for a while and basically not see anyone. We decided to do this in Arnhem as it provided a pretty rural base where it would be easy to go out, but to avoid people. So, the next morning we got up, faffed about for ages getting ready, and finally set off on the 110km ride to Arnhem. Turns out, 110km on our first day riding a fully loaded touring bike and having trained by doing absolutely nothing for 2 months was a touch over ambitious and the last 30km were somewhat of an effort of stubborn determination. 

Our first week in the Netherlands was very relaxed – basically, the weather was stunning, we did day trips in the area, ate a lot of bread and cheese, drank a lot of good beer (and a fair amount of more questionable wine) and generally settled into unemployment.

After a week, we decided to make our way back to Amsterdam by way of some touring in the Netherlands. Helpfully, the weather immediately packed it in and we proceeded to be very grateful we had invested in wet weather gear. In order of appearance, we hit up Zwolle (and caught up with a friend), Leylystad, crossed the dijk to Enkhuizen, made our way to Den Helder, visited Texel Island and, finally, meandered south to Amsterdam. In total, we had cycled 700km since arriving at the airport two weeks earlier. Zwolle and Enkhuizen were stunning and absolutely worth visiting (evidence in the form of a picture from our arrival in Enkhuizen below).

I was particularly excited about the crossing of the dijk to Enkhuizen – but 30km into headwinds later I somewhat revised my opinion of this feat of engineering and determined it may have been better to experience this Dutch institution by car. Texel Island was super relaxed and also had some cute towns. The Dutch countryside also delivered by being generally very idyllic. Overall, a very good start to the trip.

We did finally make it back to Amsterdam to visit with friends met in Uganda several years back and to catch up with friends from Vietnam met even more years ago. We also hit a few tourist spots (Giethoorn, Urk, Amersfoort, Utrecht, Volendam, etc), but, admittedly, we were very lazy and proceeded to do not much and spend a lot of time tinkering with the bikes (something that no doubt will become something of a theme).

June 2020