actual biking to Veere

We have been invited by Hester and Jean-Marie to go out on their sailboat with them today.  This sounds amazing and I’m not going to miss it for the world, but it does include a bike ride out to the

marina where they keep their boat.  So, I will have to get on a bike, bike to their house and then bike out to wherever the boat is.  I’m thinking that in a group of 4, I will be able to make it, plus it is Sunday and the town is usually a little more quiet on Sundays because all of the shops are closed.  This could be an amazing day, or I might end up dead who knows?

We arrived at their house on our bikes without incident, but this is Sunday and the town is bereft of cars, bikes, people because all of the shops and everything else appears to close on Sunday.  So, it wasn’t that hard to bike over there.  We packed up everything and took off for their boat which they said was a 45 minute bike ride from here.  Again, that’s Dutch bike riding people.  Not Jo riding.

So, we get going and about 4 miles in, I need a break because I need water and we are coming into Veere anyway which is a nice little town with some serious history, so we park the bikes and walk around the town some.  This town used to trade with the Scots and their church is huge, downtown is prosperous and then the trade went away.  It’s only a town of 800 or so now, but look how huge that church is!!!  I liked the cistern with deep divots in it from all

 the water that was pulled up over the years, the two houses downtown that the Scots must have brought native stone over for because it looked like you were in Edinburg for two houses.  So, at this point, they’re telling me that it’s not that far and show me on a

map how we have come halfway to the boat, but I notice that the boat is not so very far from Middelburg.  We have come north and east when we could have gone directly west to get to the boat, but this was the pretty way….At least we didn’t take the “scenic” route

because it zigzagged along the same route that we were taking and would have been a 20 mile bike ride all told.  Again, not a bike rider and the thought of only being halfway to the boat makes me want to cry, but we saddle up again and ride out.  Now, I have the bike in 3^rd gear

for the big wheel and 6^th gear of little wheel as Hester and Jean-Marie told it because this was where it felt like the bike did the most movement per pedal on my part.  But we did notice that I had to pedal 4 to 5 rotations more than everyone else and that included John’s

bike that didn’t even have gears, so, not sure what’s going on there.  Everyone offered to switch bikes with me, but me and this bike have hit cars together, so I’m sticking with it.  And even though riding

Hester’s bike for 200 meters gave me an idea why the others were not struggling like me, I’m not going to be responsible for wrecking her bike which was like a Ferrari compared to the utility car I was on.  (no offense Margaret)