Steady Pedals

Heemskerk to Julianadorp 58km

A shorter day today, as we wanted to get to Den Helder so we can take a ferry tomorrow to Texel for a day. It’s proving tricky and expensive to find hotels in this part of the Netherlands, so tonight and tomorrow we will be staying in an AirBnB just south of Den Helder.

After breakfast we decided to make a short detour and visit Alkmaar, famous for it’s cheese market. A pleasant route away from the dunes and the sea breeze, took us past our first windmill, on the outskirts of Alkmaar, De Molen van Piet dated from 1537, though I suspect the current version is rather more modern.

The fabled cheese market, with traders carrying cheeses on sleds and dressed like gondoliers clearly doesn’t happen on Tuesdays, so instead we were greeted by an empty market square. The only evidence of cheese being in shop windows and a nifty cargo bike.

To ease our disappointment we turned to food and our first Dutch Apple pie of the trip.

Apple pie demolished we headed off . Rejoining the North coast route we headed up towards our accommodation south of Den Helder. Stopping on the way for our first pancake and for me memories of my trip here 4 years ago, when I stopped at exactly the same restaurant .

Any easy ride after pancakes and we were at our AirBnB, a comfortable 1st floor apartment with roof terrace. Home for the next two days.

Logging into emails after arriving, I got a further bit of good news. Following a pleading letter about last night’s no refund cancellation. The hotel group has offered a free night back at the hotel if they have availability, so we shall have to try and weave that back into our plans if we can.