Nedly on his Treadly: Amsterdam to Utrecht

Wednesday October 26, 2010

Descending the stairs at the Orfeo Hostel, Amsterdam.

Today's plan was to pop into a bike shop after breakfast and grab two new tyres for the bike, preferably the standard Schwable Marathon or the Schwable Marathon Duremes, then make tracks out of Amsterdam.
I'd already sussed out the locations of some bike shops by searching on Google Maps, and from when I was riding around yesterday.
First I headed north because there were a bunch of shops up there. I first went back to the specialty bicycle touring store, just in case the bloke yesterday had translated the sign on the door incorrectly, but no, it was still closed. I went to the bike shop just up the road from that, it mainly had road bikes, no tyre for me there. I continued on a few blocks to another bike shop, unfortunately they didn't have any tyres narrow enough. They referred me to the shop up the road. They had one tyre which was the right size but it was a Schwable Marathon Racing tyre, which would be much too thin for touring. So I went to the next bike shop, they looked at the tyre, seemingly puzzled, then went out the back and came back with a tyre which was meant to be 26 inch, but was clearly too big. Anyway this continued, and I visited bike shop after bike shop, and none of them had the tyres I needed. They all seemed to look at my tyres as though they'd never seen a size like it before, then they'd come back with a tyre which was 26 inch but too wide, always 1.75 rather than 1.5 which was what I needed.
I must have visited every bike shop in the inner areas of Amsterdam, and still I could not find what I was after. I really couldn't believe it - Amsterdam, where there are more cyclists than there are pedestrians and cars combined, where people learn to ride a bike before they learn to walk, where there are more cyclists than you can poke a stick at! Pretty much the commuter cycling capital of the world, and this sized tyre was harder to find than a sharp knife in a hostel kitchen. I could not find what I thought was a standard tyre size. I'm pretty confident that after visiting a couple of bike shops in Melbourne, I'd come out with the tyre I needed.
I'd been searching for several hours, cycled almost 20 km and must have visited over 20 different bike stores, and I was about to give up. I had just one more bike shop on my list, over the south side of Amsterdam called Route-66. And would you believe it, they had the tyre I needed - a Schwable Marathon 26x1.5. They only had one, but by that stage I was more than happy just to find one. So I bought it (€28), rode back to the hostel and put it on the back wheel and threw the old one away - good riddance!
By the time I'd changed the tyre and loaded up the bike and planned a bit of a route, it was almost 4 o'clock in the afternoon! What a waste of a day, very frustrating. And to make things worse, I'd left the pasta that I cooked last night in the fridge so that I could take it with me today, and the bastards had thrown one of my jars out! I wasn't happy.
I finally hit the road and headed out of Amsterdam. The first part of my route was the same as the one I'd ridden in on.
Because of my late departure, I rode solidly with few breaks until after dark.
I thought this was a nifty little canal-crossing device, a floating platform attached to chains, and you wind a wheel to pull yourself across.

A self-propelled barge for pedestrians and cyclists to cross the canal. On the Voetangelweg, the Netherlands.

The sky had been threatening to rain all day, and it started drizzling. It's a real hassle when it rains because it means I have to put my iPhone away, lest it get wet and malfunction again, and without the GPS and map, I take so many wrong turns, and have to stop and start all the time, it really slows me down.
In one town, I discovered I'd taken the wrong route and was a few kilometres off track, so I turned around and made my way towards the right route. On the way, I saw a sign to a camping ground/caravan park, and although I never plan to stay in one of these, if it's time to pitch the tent, I often turn in because there are often good spots to camp near caravan parks. This turned out to be a good decision, because I found myself in a park, and discovered quite a few options for a reasonable camping spot. Never satisfied with one until I've had a good look around to make sure it's the best spot, I kept wandering and found a perfect spot. Well, not perfect, but pretty damn good, the best one what I'd come across. You know you've found a good spot when you see evidence of others camping there before, such as a fire place and logs to sit on, as this one had.
I set up the tent, then went for a walk and ate tea while watching the tennis live. Well it wasn't professional tennis, it was just some locals having a hit, but still, I wasn't complaining, it was more interesting than my usual entertainment when I'm camping.