2015_07_19 - Texel

Cycling Dynamic Duo, Fresh as Daisies

    A cold, grey start to the day promised rain. Clutching water proofs just in case, we headed to the TESO ferry service, only 80m away, to catch one of the regular ferries across to Texel. We had enjoyed our cycle ride on Texel a couple of years back, so we intended to explore different parts today.
    The warship we had noticed anchored in the Marsdiep lifted anchor and slowly moved out into the North Sea, a couple of fishing boats drifted into the Waddenzee on the fast moving incoming tide, and a gas field support vessel chugged along with its fresh supplies. Gulls hovered about the ferry as it sped along, hoping for titbits, but today there were not as many children to feed them.
    Hiring three bikes was painless. Rex wanted an electric bike to aid his power output and to leave Meryl standing. He thought this would increase his range up to 40km, as if! "I need a 100 euro deposit for the electric bike, plus I need to see your passport," said the woman at the till. None of us had a passport with us, so I showed her my bus pass. The poor woman had no idea what she was looking at, but it seemed to suffice.
    Soon we were hurtling as free as the wind (perhaps because the wind was behind us) in a northerly direction along N501, and then we turned off to Oudeschild. Our route took us down a very long cycle path which ran adjacent to the road, passing peat walls, which Texel has in abundance, and lush fields separated by ditches hemmed in by reed beds. A cacophony of water fowl provided a melody over the background hum of the wind whistling through the reeds and trees.

Peat Wall

    The village of Oudeschild came about at the start of the 17th century, out of a group of houses at the end of the Skilsloot. The Skilsloot was the canal, on which small boats transported barrels of drinking water from the wells at "Brakestein" to waiting ships at the Roadstead of Texel. This iron-rich water was non-perishable and, therefore, loved by the ship-owners. Just outside Oudeschild were a set of wells called the "Orphan's Wells", because they were owned by the orphanage in Den Burg, which drew some income from the lease of the wells. Just as in Den Hoorn which we had visited in 2013, a large number of pilots settled in Oudeschild. Busy shipping traffic in the 17th and 18th century contributed to a strong growth of Oudeschild, which was originally known as 't Schilt. As early as the 17th century, another village came about near Oosterend, which was inhabited mainly by those involved in shipping. This new village was called Nieuweschild and the village of 't Schilt was given the name Oudeschild.
    Today Oudeschild is a small town, full of picturesque, quaint and typically Dutch houses sheltering behind the dyke that protected them from the Waddenzee. Passing the windmill at the top end of the town, we located the harbour, home to the fishing fleet, with a fair number of trawlers.
    Precipitation had started by now, so we took shelter in a cafe on the harbour front, together with other likeminded souls. Hot chocolate and coffees warmed us up, but by now it was teeming down outside. There was only one thing we could do in such circumstances, have another drink.

Designer Sheep

I idly gazed around, then a picture on the top of a cupboard caught my attention. It was actually a group of photos all arranged in a matrix, and each photo was of an ear. Now I have never studied ears before, but when I observed a group of them together, I thought how ugly ears were; my personal opinion of course.
Gradually the rain eased off, and we joined the mass exodus from the cafe, and continued our exploration. Within a mere couple of metres Rex was bellowing out, "My electrics don't work!" True, there was no sign of life in any of the LEDs on the machine. We checked cabling, battery and switches, pressed, tugged and hit, but nothing sprung into life. Rex was on the verge of despair; he would now have to pedal like the rest of us. No longer could he aim for a 40km ride. After a further series of expletives, a sulky Rex joined us in our cycle across to Den Burg, the capital of Texel.

Blast This Bike

Handsome Weather Vane

    Our journey took us past pick-your-own farms, but the miserable skies were not conducive to fruit picking. We rolled into Den Burg and parked our bikes by the Aldi supermarket. Rex was still hopping from foot to foot in Victor Meldrew mode, threatening to hang, draw and quarter the helpless machine. My mind was instantly transported back to a scene from a Fawlty Towers episode, when John Cleese resorted to using a large tree branch to thrash his mini because it would not start. By now, men wearing white coats were nervously approaching Rex, but we managed to prise him away from his dumb machine and frog-march him into town.
    We had spent some time in Den Burg two years back. It was heaven to Meryl, she adored walking amongst the shops, full of clothes and gift shops, and she even remembered a shop from our previous visit.
    By chance, we walked past a group of Dutch who I recognised from the bike hire place, and they had also passed us on our journey up the N501. I spotted one of the ladies had an electric bike too, so I walked up to her and asked her if there was a secret way of restoring power to the machine. "Ah yes," she said. "You are still in standby. You must press the black button at the back of the bike," she added, pointing to an innocuous piece of black plastic sitting just above the rear light. "Dank je well," we all echoed to her. Rex's spirits lifted immediately, his face resembling that of a small child who has just received a present from Santa.

Back in Den Burg Again

    To celebrate, we each had a toasted sandwich in a cafe on the main square. However, Rex would not let the bike incident go, and he was still whinging. There again, he had a right to, since the young lad who had handed out the bikes back at Het Horntje had not explained the innocuous switch to us. But I saw a glimmer of humour in all this, the battery episode took me back about 55 years ago, to a TV programme I watched as a child, "Torchy, Torchy the Battery Boy." I started to sing to Rex the song that went along with it. That did not go down well!!
    Once replete, we went out into the square, and I collared a young fellow to take our photo at the very same place where we had one taken two years ago. "Take three, four or five," I urged him. He took several from different angles, trying to get his girlfriend in the background too. He even gained a high vantage point to take a snap. "People will see my shortage of hair," I joked with him. "Don't worry," he quipped, "the people who will see this already know you have a shortage of hair." We all fell about laughing at that quirky comment.
    While strolling back to the bikes, Rex came up with another bike problem, "I can't find the key to the bike lock." He frantically searched every nook and cranny of his clothing; no it was not there, he must have dropped it somewhere. There was only one thing for it. Go back to the bikes, then follow the same route taken to see if we could spot it on the ground. So, we got back to the bikes, and ..... there in his bike lock was the key. Rex and bikes just don't go together.

Reliefs in Den Burg

With no rain, but a strong wind, we headed north out of town up to De Waal. We had only travelled a couple of kilometres out of Den Burg before we had another bike related incident. Meryl's bike gave up the ghost. I examined the machine, and soon deduced that the chain had come off the chainring. On my bike in the UK, I would rectify this in a couple of seconds by simply putting the chain back on with my fingers. However, Dutch hire bikes seem to use chain guards which prevent access to the chain. We had no tools to remove the guard, so the only options available to us were to either undertake a very long walk, or call the hire outfit. Fortunately I had my phone, but none of us knew the international code for Holland. We huddled around for a while, and then I spotted a cyclist in the distance approaching us. "Perhaps he has some tools, or knows the international code for Holland," I muttered.

Texel Humour

    The cyclist turned out to be an elderly lady who grasped the problem immediately. There we were in the middle of nowhere, and this kind lady was apologising that she could not offer us any coffee. Understandably she had no tools, but she kindly called the hire company, and explained to them the situation and exactly where we were. "They will bring you a replacement bike in about ten minutes," she said in perfect English. That really was very good of her.
    She was a bubbly lady who spent the time of day chatting away with us. "Where are you going to?" she asked. "De Waal," we replied. We soon learned that she lived there. "You have good weather coming, look at the blue sky," she said, pointing to a thin slither of blue sitting above the horizon to the south-west of us.
    "Do you get fed up with all the tourists?" Rex enquired. We had to explain the concept of "fed up" in this context to her, but the lady can be forgiven, English is not the easiest of languages. "Oh no, we need the tourists, we could not survive otherwise," she quickly replied. "But you have farming here," said Rex, sweeping his hand around at the vast expanse of fields surrounding us. "Ah, the farmers have problems here," she answered. "There are powerful groups who want to turn over a lot of farmland to nature. They have a lot of financial backing, and the ear of the government. These groups want more bird life on the land, but what are we getting, lots and lots of geese, and they destroy everything. All the wild flowers disappear, they leave a mess, and they are noisy."

Quiet Moment in De Waal

    "Why don't you just eat them?" I asked. She hooted with laughter. "Dutch people do not eat geese," she informed us. "Occasionally we have to gas them," she added. We discussed the Frisian Islands and the dialect for a while, and we learned that Texel belongs to the province of North Holland, not Friesland. "Nobody on the Frisian Islands speaks Frisian. Only people in Friesland speak Frisian, and it is really like another language. Across the rest of the Netherlands there are lots of dialects, but Frisian is another language. At school, all the children across Holland are taught AN, which is the universal Dutch tongue," she explained. Standard Dutch (Algemeen Nederlands, often abbreviated to AN) is the standard language as it is taught in schools and used by authorities in the Netherlands, Flanders, Suriname, and the Dutch Caribbean. The Dutch Language Union defines what is AN and what is not. Since efforts to "uplift" people came to be considered rather presumptuous, the earlier name Algemeen Beschaafd Nederlands ("Common Civilised Dutch") and its abbreviation, ABN, have been replaced with Algemeen Nederlands and thus AN. The implicit insinuation that people speaking dialects or with an accent were not civilised was thus removed.
    By this time the bike hire company turned up with a replacement bike for Meryl, so we thanked the kind lady profusely, and she carried on her cycle ride to Den Haag whilst we continued to De Waal.
    With just over 400 inhabitants, De Waal is the smallest village on the island, and similar to Den Burg, Oosterend and Den Hoorn, built on one of the boulder clay outcrops. The village sits above the Waalenburg polder. Prior to the polder being dried out for the first time in 1436, the sea could flow freely between De Waal and the high country around Den Burg. De Waal was indeed small, and no sooner had we cycled into this picture-postcard village, than we found ourselves popping out the other side.
    The lady had mentioned that the cycle route from De Waal to Oudeschild was an excellent one to take since it went through a patch of forest. We took her advice and headed off under brightening skies, passing fields full of potatoes and wheat, and farms with large mounds of sweet smelling silage dotted around them.

Netherlands/Berlin Trip - Texel 19th July: