Today is our longest ride during the trip. We are on the road by 8:45 after a hearty breakfast at the hotel. We want to ride through the National Park de Biesbosch, a delta full of plants, animals and birds.
It takes us 45 minutes to ride to the ferry and arrive just as the ferry is pulling in from the other side. It is a car ferry, so about five cars drive on and three bikes, two of them ours. It costs us 2.84 Euros for both of us for the crossing.
Riding along the bike trail south, we see fields, both cultivated and non cultivated. Along the waterways are herons and ducks and we hear birds we cannot identify. There are cows here too! Not quite our idea of a national park, but it is peaceful here. It is very quiet as it is a Monday and only mid morning. Our destination is another ferry dock on the south end. As we ride up to the dock we see that the small ferry is about 2/3 of the way across the water.
This ferry ‘t Leeuweveerke is a solar powered ferry, run by volunteers, that holds only 12 people, only bikes allowed and no motorized bikes or vehicles. The ferry does have batteries, just in case, and it does not run on bad weather days. We notice how quiet the ride is. Murray and I are its only passengers for the 15 minute crossing. This ferry cost us 11 Euros.
We ride onward. Today is the first day that the wind is strong, really strong. We ride into the wind all day long. Murray sacrifices himself and rides in front so I can draft behind him. We ride this way all the way to Bergen op Zoom. When we turn a corner and the wind shifts, sometimes I get blown off the back and have to call out to WAIT!
In one section of the ride we ride by huge oak trees lining the road. I’m sure there was more than a hundred oak trees! I have never seen so many, ever. The crunching under our tires is tiny acorns that have fallen on to the path.
Remember me saying that we thought the geese were flocking? Today we saw 3 or 4 large vees of geese flying overhead. Yup, they are migrating!
We are both hurting for the last 5 kms as we ride into the center of Bergen op Zoom and are thankful when we reach the hotel. We are staying at the Hotel de Draak, the oldest hotel in Bergen op Zoom, having been built prior to 1400, and survived two city fires. The hotel sits on the market square, where all the action is.
Debbie uses the word ‘action’ a little loosely. This is the sleepiest town we have visited. I don’t think there is much for a tourist to do here. A couple of European old buildings and that’s about it. A few locals are around but not very crowded. I still think it is a village worth one night stop over.
