Day 2. Hoog Soren to de Bijland contd.
This section ended with a climb where I tried to chase down a father and son on mountain bikes. In the end I had to give up, after almost drawing level, and waited for Damae to catch up. A little further up we paused to drink. As you can see the cyclepaths here (albeit tarmaced) were little wider than the trikes. Once underway again we had a short climb through forests before turning right and then had to slow to pass a family of four, losing our rhythm. This was clearly a problem with this sort of HPV. We were also conscious that these were narrow track trikes, and that the standard Trices were ten centimetres broader. It would have been difficult to keep one of those on the tarmac in this section even without attempting overtaking manoeuvres.
We were now following the red cycle route signs rather than the green LF route signs. The normal cycle network often leads you through some lovely countryside. We lost the route again around Dieren and had to turn round (again). I tried a different strategy and picked the Scorpion up by the rear rack and walked it round. Although trikes are cool you don't look very cool man-handling it on a narrow cycle path. You just look rather silly! Still one minor advantage of our detour was the presence of a Citroën enthusiast in the suburban housing estate we travelled through. The back end of a very yellow H-van made itself very visible. This cheered Stan up a little and within a couple of minutes we were back on track.
Shortly afterwards we paused again whilst waiting for a ferry, which was followed by another dyke section. By now we were really starting to miss the bike seating position and the good view of the surroundings. If we were to spend a lot of time on recumbents I think I'd have to develop an interest in botany. We also had more chances to practice passing through narrow gaps and not for the first time this weekend realised how much faster we would have been going on our touring bikes.
Cycling towards Doesburg we remarked again how like Germany this part of the Netherlands is. In Utrecht and the Randstad in general you see the traditional Dutch houses, windmills and polder landscape. In the East, the landscape (although consisting of dykes and drained land) is just that bit more lush and wild. The rivers flow rather than just sitting there looking like a French impressionist's lily pond. There seems to be just that bit more space available for everything and looks like this part of the country has historical riches absent from the 'Groene Hart' of the Randstad. The more I cycle around the Netherlands the more I realise that the traditional 'cheese market in Gouda' scenes were never representative of the Netherlands as a whole. There are big cultural differences between the various regions and the way the east and south of the Netherlands look is very different from the Randstad.
As we were passing the cathedral in the centre we saw a courtyard and at the end a terrace in the sun. It was irresistible so we went in. We could not decide if we wanted to eat a meal or a snack so settled for coffee and cake. Although pleasant enough, neither was of the highest standard but as we wanted calories and caffeine it was the perfect place to be.