Middleburg to Rockanje

 

This gives you a rough idea of where we were today. We were basically traversing islands and then spending time riding on very large man made bridges/dams across the western side of the Netherlands. Today was supposed to be 45 miles but due to some accidental route deviations (not quite lost but close) we ended up doing 50 miles. Not a big deal except we were riding into a 15-20th head wind the entire way. It was really bad on the long bridges which was about half of the ride. We were beat by the time we arrived in Rockanje. The town we are staying in is very different from everywhere else we have been. There are no old buildings. Everything is new (like 1970s and newer) I think it is a resort ocean front community. We in theory are just a stones throw away from the beach. We didn’t look for it… we were sick of the wind. 

We are literally on the edge of town and have goats out our window. We are staying at another B and B. This one called De Jongens which means the boys in Dutch. 

The sign notes three things you can do while here.. Eten, Drinken, and Slapen. Well we so far have done two of the three(eten and Drinken) with some plans for good slapen later this evening.

As for our ride here we got to spend quite a bit of time on the bridges between the islands that make up Zeeland. It is part of the Delta works project that was built to control North Sea flooding of Zeeland. There was major flooding with property damage and loss of life in 1953. The project was huge with moving huge amounts of dirt to form a large man made island. Originally the plan was to completely seal off the water and make all of the water fresh water. Ultimately they decided to allow continued salt water in. The project was completed in the mid 1980s. There is now a plaque in Dutch that says the tides are controlled by the moon, the winds, and Us. 

Since completion the gates have only been fully closed around 20 times. Last in January of this year.

We did have some pretty sites along the way like here where we were cycling along side a canal again.

We did quite a bid of riding up on the dike although this picture is just beside the dike. The Dutch have reclaimed a huge amount of land over the centuries. Even well before modern equipment. Look at these maps.

The have even added an entirely new province with 500,00 people living in it that is solely reclaimed land.

So I did not take a picture of every windmill today… But here are the ones I did snap pics of:

Tomorrow promises to be a shorter but not necessarily less windy. We were encouraged to do the route from south to north as the prevailing winds are favorable to the trip…So far quite unfavorable.

Will talk more about why we almost get lost tomorrow. Hoping for less of that. Until then we will keep the pedals turning and keep moving north.

Peace

Dale and Ila