Norwich to Uppsala (Sweden) day 3. Dull

Day 3. Dull

Todays actual ride was pretty dull as it was mile upon mile along flat cycle paths.

The first half of the day was in Holland who had at least tried to make it interesting by putting their tracks through woods and by canals.

Unfortunately when I crossed over to Germany it all became much more functional with theirs going along side busy roads.

Every now and again the route would pass through a dull village or town where nearly everything was shut, especially cafes.

The promised rain never materialised it was just a dunk and drizzly day.

Fortunately I was able to create my own excitement as when I went to the bike this morning the back tyre was flat. They are the tubeless variety so I pumped it up and set off.

Unfortunately it would not hold much pressure and needed repumping every few miles.

What I needed was a bike shop but like the cafes they seemed to be closed and in short supply.

I did manage one cafe stop along the canal. It was next to the Hennie Kuiper Museum who was apparently a very famous Dutch cyclist in the 70’s (I’ve checked Wikipedia and can confirm he was). 

The lady in the cafe said that as a fellow cyclist she assumed I had stopped there because of the museum but I told her I’d never heard of him and had stopped as I was hungry. She looked more than a little disappointed which probably explains why it took her 30 minutes to make my cheese toastie.

It did have very good apple pie and cream and partly thanks to having an attached famous cyclist museum next door scored 7.12 which puts it into first place.

I was about 80 miles into the ride when I eventually found a bike shop. Unfortunately the mechanics were rubbish, made things worse and directed me to another shop down the road. They were pretty useless too so I decided the best plan was for them to put an inner tube in the tyre which took them far longer than it should have.

Now dark I set off on the final 20 miles. Having a hard back tyre made quite a difference and the final bit felt alot easier as I got to the hotel 10 minutes before the restaurant shut, which was a result.

In other news thing of the day, bridges, was a flop. Whereas yesterday they were everywhere today they had gone AWOL. Although this one on the canal was nice so I have made it bridge of the day.

From now on I will be selecting the thing of the day on the day.

It’s storm day tomorrow so will be deciding on progress in a make it up as you go along kind of way.

Tomorrow’s weather

Stats

	Miles	Time on bike	Average speed	Meters climbed	Distance to go
Day 1 Norwich to Harwich	77.64	06:05	12.8	784
Day 2 Hoek of Holland to Deventer	102.95	09:02	11.4	366	884
Day 3 Deventer to Cloppenburg	103.48	08:16	12.5	231	782

Todays route