Tuesday 29th August: Day 1 (i.e. first full day). Hook of Holland to Khyllburg. Total mileage on day 2 is 258.7

Its grey, almost frighteningly wet and grey with rain and water all around as we approach Holland. I seem to get a free breakfast by ditheringly answering ‘yes’ when asked at the counter whether I was ‘with the biker’s group’. They meant was I one of the 72 cyclists who for an inexplicable reason are also on this boat.

For some reason my bike takes ages to start and I feel a mixture of physical anxiety and mental assurance that I have cover for almost any occurrence. I drive down the ramp and queue up to show my passport, then its on to unassuming roads out of the town and onto the network of motorways that is Holland. Its dry thankfully but the sky is very grey. I’ve set the address of my first night’s hotel into the GPS and am happy to be told how to get there – at least for now. There is not a huge amount of traffic and various smells, most of them agricultural. Eventually, a couple of hours later, it starts to rain and I find that by tipping my head sideways I can encourage the raindrops to run off my visor but when it starts to pour I realise I can’t see a thing and rather desperately pull onto the hard shoulder and start the bike’s hazard lights. I fish into my luggage to pull out the rainsuit I bought but I am really dithering here in the hope that the rain will ease off. I can’t work out why I couldn’t see. With this ballooning suit on it seems to take longer to accelerate. I note that I’ve got 2002 miles from a tank (no that was meant to be 202).

Once I get to the end of the motorways of Holland, near Aachen, I start to disobey my GPS seeing the name of a town I recognise from the map and so opting for nicer routes.

Unfortunately, as I reflect later, this is not a clever option. The thing with GPS is either to do exactly what it says or not use it at all. Taking my own route and expecting it to know what I want to do is hopeless and I wasted so much time and energy literally going round in circles and taking useless detours as my downloaded route told me after I got home.

I finally arrive at the hotel Kylburg at about 4.30 after driving off the boat at 8am and swing the bike into the garage underneath.

I am exhausted. Interestingly its my hands are forearms that are tired and twitching but not my back which is real tribute to the bike. After 4 ½ hours sleep I rode for nearly 8 hours. This isn’t a formula I want to repeat and luckily I won’t have to.

I shower – the realisation that there is no soap in this cheap hotel does not put me in a good mood with the place. I lie down on my back and fall asleep.

There is something mysteriously staid and artificial about this so-called ‘bikers’ hotel: plenty of artificial plants about 9 inches tall with wooden ladybirds attached, a significant lack of motorbikes and leathers, a lack of the rock and roll on the juke box that the website says they ‘like to hear’. Instead are a quiet collection of hesitant guests who wear money belts and walk with their hands behind their backs. Everyone else is part of middle aged couples.

Today’s riding, on reflection, had a number of phases. 1: a relaxed early time when the GPS guided me nicely on motorways from Hook of Holland across the Netherlands 2; a crisis when it poured and I couldn’t see and rode on in my cumbersome suit getting aware that I was rather tired. 3: the nicer roads in Germany when I started my helmet World War II conversations with imaginary friend Douglas – modelled on legless Douglas Bader of course, barking at him to ‘drop a cog, Douglas’ where appropriate. 4: Getting tired and frustrated with the GPS leading me around in circles when I tried to combine its route with my own ideas.

After walking round the town, I opt for dinner here not feeling up to a lonely evening in the town’s only other eating establishment. It could be a school dinner; a passing chicken curry but served not only with rice but with boiled potatoes and peas and carrots. For pudding there is, believe it or not, Arctic Roll. We can help ourselves to beers from the fridge.

Looking out from my balcony in this town built into the sides of a steep valley, later in the evening, I see houses and gardens ranged up the steep side of the hill opposite, topless fat men and fat housewives standing with their fists on their hips – as my step grandmother used to do in her blue nylon housecoat. My disappointment about the hotel fuels a distaste with this complacent small town as a whole. Having lost my novel earlier my book on psychoanalysis and Houdini does not lighten my mood.

Monday 28th July Day 0 Cambridge to Harwich: Mileage on day 1: 68.7

At the last moment I bought a rain suit from Cambridge Motorcycles as a talisman that might stop it raining while I carry this around. Surprisingly it fits, rolled up, into the minimalist luggage I own. I leave the house at about 6.30pm and already my GPS is trying to send me on some bizarre route out of Cambridge and I ignore it for the first time on the holiday. I am headed for the 11.45pm ferry at Harwich. I have my trusty new Triumph tank bag and, strapped onto the passenger seat, my old two-story tank bag with my clothes, spare bulbs, padlock in case I ever want to leave my helmet with the bike and even the hazard triangle it seems you are meant to carry in Europe squeezed into it. I have a pair of Crocs and some food and water as well as documents in the front.

I started planning this short trip months ago. The first challenge was buying a bike that would not be a strain to ride at speed all day. Even driving down to London on the M11 and back on my old Bandit 600 left me with painful wrists as I tried to hold on against the raging Essex wind. After four months of investigating and looking on Ebay I bought this Triumph Sprint ST 955i with 3000 miles on the clock. Luggage was more challenging – or rather more expensive than I could afford, so hard luggage will have to wait. Instead I invested in a Garmin GPS as I realised without someone with a map on their lap in the passenger seat next to me, finding anywhere would involve endless stops by the curb and a huge amount of wasted time.

The ride takes me out of Cambridge over the Gog Magog hills, via Haverhill, where I fill up with £15 of petrol, and beautiful winding country roads down to the A12 at Colchester then on to Harwich to catch the Stenna ferry to the Hook of Holland. It’s a beautiful sunny evening and still light when I arrive at Harwich to check in behind a German couple on an old BMW.

We chat later about their holiday in the UK. I also talk to another couple who live in Amsterdam on an older Honda with 16000 miles. He’s American and she is an English concert pianist. Also friendly is a Dutchman on a bright red Honda CBR who though young is a veteran of channel crossings as I find out later. He says he has ridden more miles on the left side of the road than the right. Three other young guys arrive on brand new but miniscule 125s and are photographed presumably it’s a jaunt for some biking magazine. I try to get in the background.

Eventually, after waiting for 72 cyclists, we are beckoned to drive up the spiral ramp and on to the boat. The Dutchman has taken his bike on this ferry many times and has his own equipment for lashing it down. I am completely hopeless at it and can’t even work the ratchet on the ties, so I get generous amounts of help and advice on this i.e. tie the bike down by its handle bars being careful not to damage any of the cables. If the handlers insist on tying the bike down over its seat, trap your gloves under the tie first to avoid damaging the seat.

I can’t believe that this is the same ferry that I was sick on every summer as a boy going to Germany for our family holidays. You barely realise that you are on something moving at all so vast and smooth is this vessel.