#Coffeeneuring Challenge: The 2016 Edition

The 6th Annual Coffeeneuring Challenge: Yay, I finished! Autumn of last year is a complete blank for me so presumably I didn't even attempt this wonderfully traditional challenge, and I know I did not complete in 2014.  So I am quite surprised and pleased that I did succeed, on 7 separate occasions, in riding my bicycle at least 2 miles for the pleasure of a hot beverage. 

I have finally figured out why this is such a tough thing to do if I'm riding with Adam. It's all down to the "spirit" of the challenge. See, Adam does not drink hot drinks. But the problem is more than that. We are both "tourists" and love nothing more than spending the day together out on our bikes peering at everything. However, Adam is not a coffeeneur at heart. He does not see the point of stopping -- or 'interrupting' -- a perfectly good bike ride for something as trivial as having a drink.  Drinking is for hydration and drinking from his bottle on the bike while on the move is perfectly adequate and sound good sense to him. Stopping is inefficient. He does it for me but I have to pointedly and directly request it. Hints go right over his head. Yet, how many times have we ended a ride only for him to say "Oh no! You didn't get to log this as a coffeeneuring ride!"  If I didn't know him (and his honest heart) so well, I'd suspect Coffeeneuring Sabotage.  

So this year, knowing that one week of the 7-week challenge would see us in the Netherlands where we would be cycling together every day, I devised a strategy:  get him cold enough and/or present our plans each day as ambitious enough that some kind of proper sit-down stop would be not only (1) welcome, (2) sensible, (3) enjoyable (even for him), and/or, if push came to shove, in some way (4) absolutely necessary.

Fortunately, the weather during our Amsterdam sojourn was fully co-operative! 

But I am jumping ahead to the second part of my 2016 Coffeeneuring Challenge.  

Without further ado, here are my 7 rides in chronological order. 

RIDE #1

Destination:  Chilterns Gateway Centre (National Trust), Whipsnade Road, Dunstable, Bedfordshire, LU6 2GY, UK

Date: Sunday, 9th October 2016

Hot drink of choice: Plain Black Tea with Milk (score: average, say 3/5)
Total mileage: 23.8km
Bicycle: Riley the Enigma

Bike Friendliness: 

Quite good. There are bike racks but it is perfectly okay to keep your bike with you and lean it against a table or wall within your line of sight.  This is a popular stop for cycling clubs.

Other Observations:

This was a beautiful morning and it was nice to see so many families out early to enjoy the great outdoors. Lots of dog walkers and kite flyers. After enjoying my hot beverage, I freewheeled into Dunstable to visit Adam's daughter and her fiance in their new, first home.

Notes From Amsterdam (Part II)

Wednesday, 16 November 2016

We are told it will rain off and on (mostly on) all day today. Oh, and windy. Gusts of wind. Those isobars are packed tight today, weaving and waving their lines towards us from the west. It's November though -- what else can you expect? We cycle north through the city, through Chinatown, pausing in Niewmarkt to remember our first visit here one extremely clement March. Then we roll straight onto a ferry over the River IJ and roll straight off the other side into pleasant suburbia (mostly land reclaimed in last 50 years to meet the demands of a rapidly expanding Amsterdam) and hence onto a wild natural Polder Oostzaan. Why this wilderness? Water management. (Everything is all about the water. Always.) Headwinds. Marshland birds. More herons than you can shake a stick at. (And at one point, somehow, we inadvertently literally did. Nerves of steel, those herons. Be still now, indeed.) I love polders. Musings on wide open skies... my mother spent her childhood in south Texas, loved wide open spaces... my father grew up homesteading in the Bitterroot ranges of northern Idaho and hated them... the two years in the 1970s we lived on the prairies, my father yearned for mountains. My sister-in-law from the prairies felt claustrophobic for years in western Oregon. Me, I'm comfortable with either. Both. I love the drama of Big Sky Country. And the Netherlands definitely qualifies. Look down at your feet, below sea level. Look up. The sky is the limit. Anyway. I like wild, empty polders! And the sun is peeking through. Lunchtime brings us to Zaanse Schans, a residential area of Zaandam that looks like a theme park but is the real deal and oddly enough not a 'protected' site (although it is listed on the European Route of Industrial Heritage). Tasty salads and coffee in a bistro run by a family with very American accents. The bikes sit unsecured outside the window. (Adam has left the key to his chain in the pocket of his other trousers!) Then back through Zaanse Schans and across the Wijdewormer to Neck then through the sprawling town of Purmerand and down long straight avenues to Edam. Edam is a "protected townscape" and very pretty, verging on twee. They really ought to pedestrianise the village centre though. A brief sit down and then... it's dark. Magic along the unlit Purmerdijk -- a night ride! Our little blinkies are next to useless. But there's no traffic, just the sound of the wind in the reeds and dry grasses bordering the canal. A few wiggles through industrial estates to make you think you're back in the UK (cycle here? inconceivable!) and then we are on a southbound train... Approximately 40 miles in total.

Notes From Amsterdam (Part I)

Preface

I wish I could have a video cam strapped to my head every time we leave the apartment. So many amazing everyday stories here. I have in fact taken very few photos. I'm just gobbling it all up with my eyes and (hopefully) brain. Not to mention, it's hard to take many photos when you have to take gloves off to do it. After a while, cold hands get faster and more efficient at slapping down the photo bug impulse.

Oh and.... autumn is so beautiful here. The backdrop to every scene is a blurry watercolour in every shade of grey, with great splashes of fallen leaves in vivid yellow, orange and gold. Add reflections from rivers, canals, lakes, marshes and puddles and it's like moving through a liquid painting.

Monday, 14 November 2016

Today it was just above freezing and pervasively damp. But there's no such as bad weather, just bad clothing... and some days that's even true. We cycled to the Novagraaf offices (a reccie for tomorrow) then through a beautiful forest, over the Amsterdam shipping canal, round Weesp (pretty but, well, nothing special as Dutch villages go - I can't believe I am saying that), then through a wonderful nature reserve where some kind of native but rare deer has recently been re-introduced, around through Naarden (which is beautiful and charming and unusual with its forts and starflake-shaped canal system), had a wonderful lunch at Het Hert (I walked in thinking "I want an omelette and a bowl of really hot soup" and that's exactly what I got), where we warmed up and dried off (or steamed gently by the radiator, if truth be told), then ventured out again only to find it was raining in earnest. Heigh ho, off we went to Muiden (or Muider, I'm not quite sure) where there is a huge, moody impressive castle dating back to 12?? called Muiderslot (I do have that part right) that is not open November-April but the village (whatever it's called) is the prettiest, most postcard-perfect place you'll ever see. We cycled along a pretty canal on a road closed to cars, then alongside a motorway, then along the Amsterdam shipping canal for a very long way (which brought back lovely memories of the Fridays' Lowlands Tour just over a year ago) and then a superb commute-hour route across the eastern part of the city to the Amstel. Which meant home. 33 miles in total. Hot shower, feet up, drink to hand... Life is good.