Leiden to Wormer(Wormer is part of Wormer land)

 Okay I must admit Wormer is a funny sounding name. I tried to find out how or why it is named Wormer but could not find any information on the subject. No count or duke Worm or Wormer. Evidently there were two wormers that were sister cities and back in the 90s they merged into Wormerland to save money by combining city services. 

Well the ride definitely had it’s ups and downs today. 

On the up side we went through an area of the Netherlands that seemed to be focused on flower raising. We passed by several fields of flowers. One field was all Marigolds which surprised us. We presumed that they are able to harvest the seeds for next years sales?? We also passed by some u-pick flower fields. Too many fields to stop and take photos of everyone. 

We also passed by the Castle Keukenhof which seemed like a good place to stop. The castle was built In the 1640s. The estate grew to about 200 acres. It included a large walled garden. Several years back a consortium of flower growers bought the estate and in the spring it is host to many varieties of Tulips. We saw many types of dahlias. Photo is of one of them. 

Back on the road we were guided back to the costal area where we went through dune areas like we saw on our way to Leiden. The difference was crowds. So many people were on the bicycle path. We kept passing and passing people. The other thing they were almost all wearing a bright orange shirt. We thought maybe it was a ride to support the trail…boy were we wrong.

This brings me to the not as great part of the day. Anyone a formula 1 race fan? Anyone heard of the Dutch formula 1 race in Zandvoort? Well we had not but what we did not know was all of these people and more were all headed to the race. When we got to Zandvoort many of the roads were closed for traffic control. We made a wrong turn and that cost us about 3-5 miles of detour as they would not allow us to return back the way we came. We ended up at what seemed like the ticket gate to the race feeling like salmon trying to bike up stream in a sea of orange t-shirts. We finally made it out and managed to not make another wrong turn. It was good to finally get out of the bicycle traffic headed to the race track. Who knew??

Today was a big Windmill day. These are some of the windmills we passed on our ride. But then we saw this:

Count them out there are five Windmills.(actually there is a sixth that you can’t see in the picture but it lost the top and did not have blades. These are most likely water mills. When they are arranged in a row like this they are typically each pumping water progressively higher. Was quite cool biking passed them.

We made it to our B and B. Looking on line we noticed rooms 1 and 6 appeared reasonably spacious. Rooms 2-5 were going to be cramped. You guessed it we are in room 4. Definitely one of the smallest spaces we have had so far. We have never had a wet bathroom before. (Not even our small motor home has a wet bath.) We made ```````````````````````````sure we took the TP out of the bathroom prior to showering as it would have gotten wet during the shower. We do have a great view of the lake out our window. Definitely hoping the room cools down. (Most places we have had do not have AC unless an open window counts for AC) It isn’t to surprising as the average high in summer is only in the mid 70s. Still this summer has been quite hot. 

Tomorrow it is on to Enkhuizen.  Getting closer to the end of the trip…

Peace 

Dale and Ila