In Which I Become an Invalid before 11 O'Clock on the First Real Day

Well, so far, so disasterous.

We had a very nice night and day with our good friends (and gracious hosts), the Loosers, in Suffolk. We were hardly given time to gulp our morning tea before being dragged off to church to watch the bellringers at work. Janet is the captain of a local group. Then we met another old friend, Rob Duncan and his family for lunch. We decided to make it a no-cycling day to give us more time with Rob, so we spent most of the afternoon wandering through Constable country, and the Loosers drove us to Harwich port in the evening to catch our ferry (thank you very much!).

We both had a very bad night's sleep, and almost got stuck behind a large gate at the Hoek of Holland! The passport control men got bored waiting for us and wandered off. Still, the first part of the journey went fairly smoothly. From the Hoek of Holland we cycled up the coast to the Hague, and that's where a man decided to open his car door into me, and down I went. Great. Still, it wasn't too bad. I got a couple of minor bumps and bruises, but my knee is still very sore. Definitely couldn't cycle on it. And all before 11 o'clock in the morning of the first proper day! Just my luck! So we changed direction and headed for the station, 5km away. I got there using a combination of unorthodox methods. I sat on my bike and scooted myself along with my left foot for a bit, and mum pushed me the rest of the way. Good thing there are cycle tracks everywhere! Even so, we weren't very popular. So we took the train to Leiden, where we had lunch, then I took the train on to our next overnight stop, Woerden, while Mum cycled it. I napped outside the station while I was waiting for her, and also got new brake pads fitted to my bike. She went round the town a couple of times first, but got there fine. And eventually we found our B and B, despite the best efforts of the Dutch trying to send us off in the wrong direction all the time. We had an enormous chinese meal and settled down to a good night's sleep.

So far it's been very pretty. Canals everywhere, with lots of weeping willows, water lilies, herons, ducks, rabbits and stuff. The weather hasn't been great, but what can you do. I'll see how it goes with my silly knee, but today is definitely going to be another train day. And to top it all off, my brand new camera has also decided it's going to break. Sigh.

Fun and games!

Ellie