Friday 24th June 2016
It was a very warm but heavily overcast morning . We knew we didn’t have a very long ride planned and so we had a later start. As it was fairly windy, the tent was in a reasonably dry condition for our onward journey. Indeed , most of the residents of the caravans we up and going to the showers. There were 2 trekker huts on site and these were being cleaned out by the farmers wife , ready for weekend tenants. She was a very nice lady who talked about her farm and as in others the cows were being fed under cover because of the weather. The other people on the campsite were only too willing to talk about the news from England and the resignation of the prime minster and the financial markets crashing. Oh joy! just what we needed. Great that I got the extra Euros out , I thought.
We needed to backtrack for a short way but soon started to follow signs to Wilnis and Woerden. Signage was a bit unclear when we got into Wilnis and we did a short ” detour” but soon got back on track along a small canal without any onther people in sight. We were now following LF4b and as we got into Woerden, the rain started falling but after putting on waterproofs it didn’t last too long and by the time we got to Bodengraven , we could take them off.
As we cycled along , we noticed how the types of crops being grown had changed. In this area there were more potatoes and brassicas , whereas further south asparagus was going sold everywhere. One lady told me , it is a short cropping season for asparagus and so when in season they ate it about 4 times a week.
Water levels were very high and we came across a young man operating a large mobile pump that was pumping water away from a market garden and into a canal. We just had to lift our bikes over – not bothered too much by ‘elf and safety here. Just after here we stopped to picnic and the sun appeared right on time.
We continued along LF4 and then and then after a couple of false starts diverted south of the route into Zoetermeer. We also came across a lifting bridge that was up for large barges to pass by. This interested us as until a few years ago, we had such a bridge in our home town , but as there are no boats going so far upriver, it has been screwed down.
By now it was very warm so we stopped for an ice cream and then continued on. Quite by chance we came across the LDS chapel and stopped to take a photo and a couple of men who were cleaning the place came out to talk to us. Just look at the cycle shed, you know you are in the Netherlands.
We explained who we were going to stay with, the sister of my friend here in the UK, and they gave us directions so we could find our hosts for 2 nights.
33 miles
cyclinginthesixthdecade 
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