Day 1:  Destination – Wijk Bij Duursted by ship.

The De Nassau

We were told that our ship would be  available for check-in between 1-4 on Saturday afternoon.  We checked out of the hotel as late as possible and asked the reception desk to call a cab to take us to a place called Rooseveltlaan, where the De Nassau was moored.  We got there just after one, but they said it was too early to check-in.  Even so, we were allowed to put our luggage in our room.  We decided to walk to a nearby grocery store to buy a few snacks and some ingredients for sandwiches.  Back at the waterfront, we sat on a low wall out front of the ship to assemble our sandwiches.  Unfortunately, the buns we bought were so dry that they literally crumbled when we tried to cut them like a dried-out sand castle.  Or in “fancy cooking terms” you might say we had “deconstructed bread with a side of ham”.  Needless to say -even with some lunchmeat- one bite of that was one too many. YUCK!  Most of the buns ended up conveniently shredded on the sidewalk by our feet.  I’d be surprised if the birds even bothered!

By then we were allowed into our cabin -which is bigger than many we’ve had in the past, but still very basic.  There is a small closet with a few hangers and two shelves, plus another small wall cabinet with 3 shelves above my bed.  

Mike checking out whether or not he fits on his bunk.

Around 4 PM, the ship cast off and we started heading for a town called Wijk Bij Duurstede where the ship would tie up for the night.

While the ship was en-route, there was a trip briefing for all passengers -held in German.  We had no idea what was going on. After the guide finished, we walked up and said… Can we get that info in English?  He kindly sat down and went over the details again in English.  

We learned that we’d be assigned a table for our meals all week.  The guy who was in charge of things like the rooms and dining room gave us the table number and I realized that it was only a table for 4.  Having been assigned a table like this on a past trip where our table partners only spoke German or French… and remembering how difficult it was to communicate the entire week, the first thing I said was… “Do they speak English?”  I was assured that they most certainly did!  In fact, the receptionist said that most of the people on the ship spoke English (perhaps so, but we never heard anything but German from 99% of the passengers all week).  

We sat down for dinner that night and found out that our table mates are from Belgium and they only speak French, with a small bit of English to help things along.  Mike’s high school French is lost in the mists of time.  My Spanish classes never really seem to come into play outside of Spain or Mexico and I’ve forgotten more than I remember these days.  Thus began the game of charades and using Google Translate.  We did manage to have a conversation of sorts.  We found common ground in talking about the Tour de France. They are extremely kind and patient people!  I feel bad that they’re stuck with us for dinner every evening.  

After dinner, the guide in charge of all matters biking, Peter, led a walk through the village of Wijk Bij Duurstede, pointing out the highlights of the town… all in German naturally.  

This village was a very important trading hub along the Rhine River between the 7th and 9th centuries.  It was constantly being raided by the Vikings over the years, which eventually led to its near abandonment. 

Our mooring for the night.

We walked from the De Nassau through a city gate where we got a great view of the windmill.  It was built in 1659 for the purpose of grinding tree bark, which was used in leather tanning.  Sources say that this may be the only “drive through” windmill in the world.

Our next stop was the church.  It is dedicated to John the Baptist and was built between 1456 and 1496.  In later years some modifications were made.

Nearby in the public square is the old water pump for the town,  It still works.

We wandered through a few village streets.

We entered a very natural woodsy park and could spot the castle through the trees.

The castle was built in the late 1200’s to help protect the village.  This led to growth for the village.  By the late 1500’s it had fallen into neglect.  In 1672, French troops heavily damaged the castle and the village.  The residents took the debris from the castle and used the stones to rebuild their homes.  There are only two of its towers remaining.  It is used as a wedding venue now.

Day 2 -Now we begin biking!    Destination:  Doesburg.  Today’s mileage:  27.8.

The Netherlands is one of the most bike-centric countries we’ve ever been to.  Bicyclists often have their own “roads” separated from traffic and sidewalks with their own road signs to obey.  When the bike paths cross traffic, sometimes the traffic has to yield to bikes and sometimes the bikes have to yield to traffic.  In more rural areas, there might just be a bike lane, but it is clearly marked and during this trip we felt that the drivers were very careful around the bikers.  There is an extensive network of bike routes covering the entire country.  They are numbered and marked along the routes -although sometimes the route signs are hard to spot.

The schedule for the first morning of biking started with the ship moving us to our official departure spot.  Around 7 AM, the ship fired up the engines and started off down the river while we ate breakfast.  The plan was tie up by 10:00 and to have the bikes unloaded by 10:30. Once that was done, we’d need to go find our assigned bikes and set them up for riding.  Turns out we arrived a bit early and the bikes were probably off the ship and ready by 9:30.  Having done this type of trip before, we sauntered out around 10:15 only to see that almost everyone had already gotten ready to ride and were actually beginning to leave.  

This trip is not a group ride that is following the guide all day.  There are at least 40 passengers -so that would be impossible to do,  We were given written directions daily and were expected to find our own way to the next stop every day in a timely fashion.  The trip also provides GPS mapping through an app called Ride With GPS, which I’d downloaded to our phones.  By the time we were ready to go, we were the last participants to depart -even the guide had left!  We brought up the route on our phones, but as we rolled out of the parking lot we realized that our maps weren’t quite set up right on our phones,  The GPS on our phones was channeling the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy arrived at a crossroads and asked, “Now which way do we go?”  (Scarecrow’s reply wasn’t exactly helpful!). There was a bit of confusion about whether or not we were going in the right direction and there was no one we could follow to get us on track if we weren’t.  We eventually managed to get on track with minimal sniping at each other!  We didn’t go far before we ran into the guide (woo hoo on track!) who’d been helping another couple on the side of the road.  He took a moment to reset some of our phone settings for the app and that got us on track for the rest of the day (even though we still ran into a couple of questionable turn decisions).  

Neither of us liked the feeling that we were miles behind anyone else from our tour.  We prefer being part of a loose group in case there are problems along the way.  So we started putting the pedals to the metal!  

We had to take two ferries today and at the first one, the ferry was just pulling away from the landing as we rolled up to it.  The good news is that some of our tour members were on it… progress!

While the ferry was landing and the passengers disembarking, our ship passed by.

It wasn’t until the 2nd ferry of the day that we caught up to a majority of the tour group.  After landing on the other side, everyone moved on at their own pace. Around then, we noticed that my phone was warning me of a low battery.  We still had 15 miles to go!  (It lasted until about 10 miles to go).  Mike’s phone wasn’t far behind in running out of power. it was then that we decided we did not want to try to finish the day without the GPS mapping -so we just went as fast as we could to finish the day. 

We saw the ship again along the way.

We only stopped once -just long enough to scarf down some sandwiches we had with us. 

We got to the ship at around 1:30… They were barely done docking when we showed up!  (We were actually the first to arrive).  But we’d made it just as Mike’s phone was getting ready to give up the ghost.  Tomorrow, which is a longer day, we’ll be taking turns using the GPS to preserve our batteries. 

Before dinner we took a walk around the town we’re in – Doesburg.  Very charming.  

This statue was in a small park next to the area where the ship was docked.

Doesburg is best known for its mustard production. It officially became a city in 1237.

The church. Notice the bike racks.

This church is called Martinikerk.  It was built in the late 1400’s,  It has overcome a lot of damage over the years.  It has been hit by lightning in 1547, 1717, and 1783.  It was damaged by the French in 1672.  It was restored between 1919 and 1930, but the tower was blown up in 1945 by the retreating German Army.

When we returned to the ship, the afternoon briefing was in progress.

Dinner was served immediately after the briefing.  We finished our meal around 8:00 PM and went straight to our room to settle down for the night.  I decided to try to find a way to get the Ride With GPS route files onto our Garmin bike GPS units that we’d brought with us.  I’d checked into it before we left and didn’t think it was possible -but thanks to Google, I found a way to download the routes to our Garmins.  We were definitely happy to transfer the routing job to the GPS units and not have to use our phones!

We were also happy to avoid having to use the written route description.  Here is the portion of the route instruction page that shows the identifying numbers of the paths used along the way today. Each number represents a turn we took along the way.

Categories: Part 3: The Tour Begins