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Having taken the overnight ferry from Harwich tp the Hook of Holland, we departed in the morning at about 9:00 to Sliedrecht.

We had prepared detailed plans which involved following the LF1, LF12 and LF4 cycle routes for most of the journey, with short detours from these to each overnight stop. We quickly discovered on the first day that the LF1 and LF12 routes were difficult to follow in places. Much of the route was well signed as we expected, but there were a number of points where there were no signs and we spent a lot of the first day getting lost and trying to re-sync with our route. As the day turned to evening we realised that this approach just would not work, so we decided to ditch our original route plans and adopt an entirely different approach. From this point on, we just drew up a list of towns and villages along what looked like a sensible route, and then navigated from town to town, asking for directions where necessary. This worked much better, as almost everyone we asked naturally knew where their next town was.

Views of the Hook of Holland showing Janina and the tandem

View from a cafe at Maasluis

Views of the Benelux Cycle Tunnel and lift at Barendrecht

This brilliant cycle tunnel crosses the Nieuwe Maas at Barendrecht. It has an escalator for pedestrians and a lift for bikes at each end of the tunnel. The Dutch designed the lift perfectly – our tandem and trailer just fitted in nicely!

Finally we arrived in Sliedrecht at around 21:00, using the GPS on my trusty TyTn II PDA to navigate us to the B&B for the night. I had fortunately programmed all the stops on our journey as waypoints on the GPS as a backup, and this came in very handy on more than one occasion.

Dinner was thankfully provided by the friendly local Turkish restaurant – about the only place open in Sliedrecht that time of night.

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