You know the feeling? Everything sorted out, soulmate found, genes mixed nicely and hatched, growing like hell... And now what?

Age dependent holiday strategies 4x14 + 1x6

Having spoken of the cycling holiday adventures at age 2,5 last time, I would like to put it into contrast with a much more recent version of a cycling holiday. Last year.

The setting this time is in the COVID-19 in-between period of 2020, where there were no actual lockdowns, but codes yellow and orange were looming possibilities. This time we decided to pre-book all our accommodations, with a clause that we wouldn't come if the rules got tighter.

Having an age gap of eight years means that you can't do stuff the same way as you used to when the oldest were eight years younger. We decided that a good way to occupy our two teenagers was to add two more teenagers, so we invited two friends to join us in our bubble.
Our youngest, 'just turned six'- boy was going to go on his trailing bike behind my wife. That way he could contribute to the driving power without the pressure of having to do it all the way or maintain the speed of the rest. Daily distances were in the order of 35 to 90 km.

My job was to tow all the heavy and bulky stuff in the trailer behind my recumbent bike. Since nobody was going to sit in the trailer this time, it could be loaded to maximum capacity and then some more (which was way more than during that earlier vacation).

As our destination, we picked our favourite amusement park, which we could reach by just following the river Rhine upstream over the Rheinradweg. The amusement park had to be pre-booked as well, to limit the number of visitors and to be able to go on their campsite.

In order to ensure the state of maintenance of all bikes, we organised a bicycle workshop two weeks beforehand, checking the state of tyres, brakes and chains, also adding cycle computers for speed and distance tracking. My own recumbent bike got a serious update at a professional workshop, effectively renewing the complete driveline. I had the presence of mind to ask for a 28-teeth gear as smallest in front (used to be 30). This made life much easier in the uphill stretches ahead (9.3% easier, to be precise).

So, off we went.

On the second day, we found out that we forgot to check the bike of my wife, so our first planned resting day was spent going off to buy and replace some spokes and the tyres and inner tubes on both wheels, plus buying a new puncture repair kit. I found it interesting that a main street bike shop could still be cash only. (Unthinkable in the Netherlands, quite normal in Germany (maybe COVID has changed that by now)).

Despite following the river Rhine, not all was flat and easy. Ferries, especially when getting off them, led to serious inclines, sometimes stairs. The road also sometimes switched between on and off the dyke. On many of these occasions, our adolescents had to park their bikes after reaching the top and come back for me to help me up.

Like the just-too-narrow gates littering the Dutch coastal route many years earlier, the Germans also have come up with their own cycle trailer obstacles. This time it was red-and-white zig-zag type stiles. This is fine with just a bike. Not so when you have a long and wide trailer combination like mine. The preferred placement was at the bottom of drops in the road. First you lose all speed you have, then you get stuck half the time (twice if there is a road crossing), then you have to get up the hill with zero starting speed.

Another invention which was very good for the intensity of my exercise regime were the gravel paths with a 5cm loose upper layer on top of the dykes when we got further South. Cycling becomes ploughing that way, especially when you have four wheels on three different tracks. The alternative to the loose gravel, bigger stones wasn't that much better. It still amazes me that our wheels survived all of those. A bigger problem were the roadside brambles in the path of my trailer wheels on many of the smaller single-track paths. Those accounted for most punctures.

Given our limited carrying capacity, we relied on daily shopping on the weekdays. This all went well until we ran into Mary Ascension celebration. We were on the French side of the river and found that every single shop was closed. Our luck was that across the bridge in Germany, business was going on as usual. The campsite we contacted months before made a lot of fuss though. They told us that there was always place for passing cyclists back then, no reservations needed. Now they were fully booked and told us that their definition of 'passing cyclists' was limited to two persons with one small tent, not a group of seven with a big tent (despite the fact that we mentioned group size when we first asked them). We were supposed to stay there for two nights, they eventually agreed to have us for one night. Calling the next campsite in Germany had a similar result: No space left! Two hours and several phone calls later we found another campsite further along the route on the French side that would have us the next two days. In the end, this was all for the best, because our neighbours found it necessary to party on till half past five in the morning. We were very happy to leave that place, being careful not to reduce noise as we would normally do when packing up early.

Before going off to describing more ordeals, I will now try to devote some space to telling positive stuff about the scenery. First we had to cross a bit of the Netherlands to get to the river Rhine in the first place, this included taking one of the sparse long inclines we have around here, through pine forest, then descending again between lots of pastures. Entering Germany towards the Roman settlement of Xanten, we found that said Roman settlement was closed for visiting on Mondays due to Corona rules (Guess what day we were there…). Crossing the 'Ruhrgebiet', a conglomeration of big industrial cities (Duisburg / Krefeld / Düsseldorf / Köln (Cologne) and Bonn) was not as bad as we had expected. The air in Krefeld did taste quite chemical, but there was a lot of forest / park area between the industrial areas. The boulevard in Köln is a place to be avoided when coming in cycling during rush hour. We did visit the chocolate museum (yummy!) and the Cathedral the next day. Leaving that stretch we started following the riverbends more closely to get to the city of Koblenz. The confluence of the Ruhr and Rhein rivers, called 'Deutsches Eck' (German corner) was a nice monumental spot, but a bit too crowded for me. After Koblenz, the surroundings start to become seriously elevated at the sides, leading on towards and past the world famous Loreley rock, where lots of ships have gone on the rocks. In Boppard, we did some light rock climbing on the 'MittelRheinsteig Klettersteig' on our day off. The scenery there is lovely, but the heat was overwhelming at over 35°C. After passing the second big Urban area (Mannheim, Frankfurt) you can start choosing between France (western shore) and Germany (Eastern shore). All in all, outside the cities there is a good variety of forests, pastures and dykes, with the regular freighters coming up or down the river to look at.

Cycling with four adolescents is interesting. The default formation was my wife with the trailer bike in front, also doing navigation, then the adolescents two by two when space allowed, otherwise in single file, with me at the back with my heavy goods vehicle. Apparently adolescents have trouble with constant uniform movement. This goes for sideways as well as for forward speed. Switching between single and double file, turning and braking were controlled by means of vocal commands. This worked most of the time. My daughter managed to crash her luggage into the side of an oncoming cyclist, who then went off the dry side of the dyke. Luckily nobody was hurt. In another occasion we had to brake hard (youngest slid off his saddle), leading to a nice sandwich of adolescents as the two at the back didn't even manage to apply brakes before getting to a forced standstill.

Adolescent speed variations are very tiresome when you are trying to propel a 180+ kg combination (Me+bike+trailer+luggage) over any sort of distance. Especially the boys had the repeating process of standing up, pedalling hard for 10-20 seconds and then coasting for up to 30 seconds. This is hell if you are the one behind them, trying to keep one steady pace.

One of the things you cannot plan is the weather. We did not have a lot of rain while cycling. A lot more fell during the nights, which is fine by me. On one occasion, at the only campsite where we didn't have a sheltered spot, we had a massive thunderstorm. While I was outside with a hammer securing tent pegs, the rest were inside the tent, holding on to it and live streaming it to parents and friends at the same time. (We are going to die! Look, there goes another tent!). Only after all was well again, could it be named 'an adventure'. The most common weather was sunny and hot though. Really hot. We used a lot of sunscreen lotion.

Finally, after 15 days, 5 flat tyres (relatively low given that we had 15 wheels together), one broken quick-release pin and 952km, we reached our destination to get three well-deserved days of rollercoasters and water fun.

For reasons of time and to avoid repetitiveness, the trip back was by train, putting the bikes and luggage on a trailer brought by the parents of one of the borrowed friends.

Ten hours by train wearing facemasks all the time is not what I would call comfortable. (Positive point: Nobody got COVID). We had to move away from a group of ladies for the sake of our eardrums though, since they decided not to lower their voices despite several requests and felt it necessary to perform their usual Whatsapp group chatter live over the course of three hours, at the top of their voice.

What did we learn?

• Be sure to know the local public holidays.
• Google maps is ideal to find the nearest bike shop when stuff breaks.
• Some parts are not on stock in any bike shop.

Part of the charm of long-distance cycling is that you can let your mind wander or have conversations with whoever is closest. For me, the journey itself was as important as the final destination.

Caiman Raptor Elk

29.03.21 Front Page

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