Day 3: Texel to Vlieland

Our second attempt at a rest day also proved to be something of a challenge. We fought our way through 38 km of really strong head wind on the Texel coast...



before getting on to a small boat.


After securing the bikes on deck, we went down to join a group of Dutch pensioners getting noisily pissed on the local schnaps. Great. Then the boat stopped in the middle of the sea and told us to get off (I will upload a pic when I have won the battle with my phone). There was a rickety wooden jetty that ended a little further towards the coast, but still in the sea. Two seals popped their heads out of the water to observe how we were getting on. But help was at hand in the shape of an enormous semi-amphibious truck that waded through the shallow water, picked us up, took us past some tanks and other military objects in a no-go zone and negotiated a big dune before eventually dropping us off at the isalnd's one real road. All very exciting were it not for the pissed pensioners...

But Vlieland is perhaps even more beautiful than Texel and we had another great evening eating fish and drinking the local "wadd water".

Running total: 211 km