This would be our last day in Gouda and our last day of biking in Holland – sigh!! I do love putting down roots, staying for a while, blending into the woodwork, as it were, and pretending that you have lived in a place all your life. Well, even three days, in a small place, […]
Although Holland is technically a flat country, there are head winds. As one cyclist put it, “In a country that builds windmills, you have to figure there is going to be wind.” So it was that we peddled back to Gouda into a driving force that kept pushing us back from whence we had come!
We had cycled to Haastrecht on a bike path that ran parallel to a busy road. No doubt our GPS, had it been working, would have taken us along a pretty country lane that also ran parallel to the road but far enough away that you barely saw or heard the cars. Sigh! Anyway, as
Our train left for Gouda from Utrecht at precisely the time our tickets said it would. There’s something to be said about northern Europe’s stoic adherence to the mechanics that make things work. There is no throwing up of hands, when trains do not arrive on time – Paris, cursing coach doors that won’t close
I think before it’s all said and done, I have to ride the Orient Express, because I love travelling by train and I love Agatha Christie!! There is something about going down to the station, with it’s spectacular glass ceiling, imposing iron girders, and maze of intersecting tracks that says, “awe.” From our apartment, we
The final leg of the bike journey on Le Petit Train du Nord was 42kms from Val David to St. Jerome and it was for the most part all downhill. We did coast past cyclists who were going the other way – uphill. They were struggling. Now I know why the tour bus takes you
I gather that you get to have a “des Monts” after your name, in the Laurentians, if you are a town that is really at the top of a mountain. Well, Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts certainly is and anyone who has cycled to it along Le Petit Train du Nord painfully knows how really high it is!! We’ve
OK, It wasn’t built overnight. It had been there all the time, only I hadn’t seen it. That is, I hadn’t looked at an elevation map. This was an old train track, why would I have to be concerned about elevation? Why, because I’m not a puffer belly – OK, I puffed a lot on
The cycling trail from Labelle to St. Jovite was more of what we had remembered from ten years ago. It was gently rolling and very flat in many places. It wasn’t as easy as yesterday’s paved trail, but I would trade crushed stone for pelting rain any day!! Although there was a lot of heavy
The lodging for the first night of our trip down Le P’tit Train du Nord was Auberge Chez Ignace, which was not only a refuge from the storm, but also a welcome oasis of warmth, charm and wonderful food. Here too, we finally had an opportunity to meet the other six people, who were travelling
