Day 12 - Ommen
"Remember, in the woods you won't see the wolf but the wolf will see you....".
It is with these words echoing in my ears that I leave my host and pedal off into the wolf-rich woods. No one really knows where the wolves came from though in all probability they wandered over the border from another Schengen Zone country and have found a home in the wooded areas of the Netherlands. A young girl was grabbed by a wolf in the woods recently though she was with her parents and came to no real harm. In an unrelated incident a search party was raised when a cyclist went missing but the search had to be called off when it got dark for fear of further incident; in the event the cyclist turned up unharmed unaware he was presumed eaten by wolves. The Netherlands also has populations of wild boar.
In broad terms I have had a week of sunshine and showers, if I got a bit damp the warmth (15 centigrade) and breeze have quickly dried me. Opting for no waterproof trousers or any gloves has worked but only just.
Horrible photo but the windmill was hemmed in by houses and there havn't been that many photo opportunities today.
Last night's accomodation was in a housing development built for the workers in the thread industry (nylon, dacron) which enabled Emmen to grow. I was in a block of houses unromantically called Cluster 1, with Cluster 2 adjoining. The road layout means limited traffic and even more than other parts of the Netherlands there is even more incentive to get on your bike. The fine green lines denote cycle paths. The estates are now protected a bit like a 1930s house development of a given style might come under a conservation order in the UK.
The Dutch have a cycling technique whereby one rider sidles up to another and with one hand for steering uses the other to anchor themselves onto their partner by gripping the crook of their partner's arm. This is usually school girls but could be school boys or - and this is even less likely - grown up couples. The person anchoring themselves in this manner gets a partial free ride, it levels out any fitness inequality and allows the two people to talk. A variant of this happens when a parent uses one hand on a child's shoulder to give them a partial push.
Cycling in the Netherlands; the node system.
Close to my destination I encounter sand dunes again.
My accommodation tonight is in one of the traditional farm houses you see across the Netherlands. They are large barn-like structures with accomodation for people at one end then the remaining three quarters is given over to farm animals, hay and equipment. These days they are used as large houses though if you observe them from the outside the fenestration and shutters tell the story of the buildings past. My accommodation is self-contained and is at the barn end; it still has the original hay loft structure. In this area the farms were small and the fields developed into small domes due to the extra soil and organic material that was applied; it gives the landscape a very distinctive and appealing look.
Today was 45 miles and a certain fatigue has set in. As I need to divert for accomodation tomorrow is another 45 miles and so it goes on. I need to develop a strategy to manage that.
