We rode out of town and went to a cheese farm.
A few scratches on the head, and I made a new friend in this llama.
The farmer gave us a little tour of the cheese production,
brining,
aging,
and cows. We bought some regular cheese, one nettle-flavored, and one pesto-flavored.
We stopped at a couple places in Bergen to see examples of Amsterdam School style architecture.
Then we parked at a church which had been destroyed during the Reformation, but which had been partially rebuilt to now have a smaller church.
Around the church was a farmers market, and we bought some bread, then got some really delicious cakes and a drink from a cafe.
Our tour guide made us promise not to laugh at our next stop: a Dutch ski resort.
It is actually a fairly large hill for The Netherlands, and it’s all coated in a kind of brush-like surface that apparently gives a fairly similar feel on skis to the grainy snow of the Alps.
Then we rode out on the dunes to a newly created beach in front of an enormous dyke and ate lunch in the breeze.
Descending from the dyke and looking back you can get an idea of the scale.
We returned to the barge a little after two by meeting it on the North Holland Canal. Usually the short riding group and long group just take different routes to the same meeting point for the barge. Today, however, the short group met the barge on the canal, and the long group would meet it at Den Helder, which is at the northernmost end of North Holland. We rode the short group today so that we could ride around in the barge for a bit. Here is some of what we saw.
We went through a big lock, but it was about as photogenic as a cave.
We picked up the long group bikers in Den Helder, then we headed out to Texel Island. For a while we had an extra passenger.
A lot of large ocean-going vessels were docked and moored in the harbor at Den Helder.
We crossed over to Texel and docked in Oudeschild. Since it was the Fourth of July, dinner on the boat was “American night” featuring burgers and hot dogs.
We wandered around Oudeschild after dinner, and found a geocache.
We found another geocache on this little island which used to be a fort.
The sun setting over Oudeschild from the large dyke which surrounds much of the island.
