June 29

I feel absolutely bushed. I got up this morning with the plan of just an easy ride up to the fishing town of Spakenburg and then an easy journey back. Well, how many times can one get lost when signs are hidden behind branches, grass, or just do not exist... well, maybe i missed the odd one too! I rode out of Hoevelaken, through the side of Amersfoort, where i got lost first, then onto Spakenburg. It is a very cool old village with many of the old boats still in use! I ate my prepacked lunch on the inlet where all the boats come in. After lunch I went to the VVV and found out where the museums were and headed over to the first one... which, as it was Monday, was of course closed! I went for a ride around the town and found another museum hidden behind a church. It only coast 3.5 Euro's to get in and then the older gentleman who knew a couple of words showed me around. They had dummies which wore the traditional clothes of upto 200 years ago. They also had the old high chairs, mockups of old class rooms where the kids had a small blackboard on their desks as well as a ink well in the centre top of their desks. They had examples of an old shop where you could buy rice, penuts etc by what ever weight you wished as it was all in bins. They also show miniture fishing boats like the wooden ones you can see in the photo album. In the bootom of the boat, on both sides, at the back, the have holes with steel sive like plates over them. This was so they can keep the fish and eels they caught alive till the got back to port, and also acted as a balast.
Then I headed over to a town called Baarn where I got lost for the second time. But I fell across an old castle which I have also put in the photo album. From Baarn I rode to Soest where I got lost for the third time! I was quite over the whole riding experience by this stage, especially considering it got as high as 29 degrees celcius. Then I finally found the cycle paths I was meant to be on and exhaustedly trudged home to Hoevelaken. It ended up being another 50km day on the pushbike!!! Hope you like the pictures... The pictures never really seem to do the sights justice! And it is also sad that as I have seen so much good stuff, it takes even more impressive stuff to impress me now then it did before.