Texel

Yesterday the weather was delightful, my friend Elise was in town from England and I woke up early and decided, screw it let's throw a sicky. By 0813 we were on a train and heading to the north of Holland towards a coastal town called Den Helder.

Train travel trips like this always fill me with a combination of excitment and nostalgia: sitting in the carriage watching the tulip fields flying by and finishing off a re-read of that truly most excellent of coming of age novels 'Becoming a Man' by Paul Monette I would have been happy if the train carried around in circles.

Of course it didn't and we pulled into the rather unremarkable port town of Den Helder and started to try and find our way towards the ferry to Texel. A supremely unhelpful woman declared there were no buses to the terminal and we had to walk, so we set off into the jungle of pontoons and lightships that lay on front of us. Of course predictably we were off on the wrong track and after confirming with a local that there a) was a bus and b) it went regularly from the very terminal we had asked the advice at directly to the ingress point of the ferry, we started walking along the dyke that would take us there. I won't pretend I was happy, in fact I was ruminating on ways to get a fatwah declared. Still we passed the interesting sight of a Royal Dutch submarine and mine-sweeper and arrvied the the mire of pathways and 8 lane traffic that made up the ferry terminal.

Both Elise and I were surpirsed at a) the ludicrously cheap day return fare of 3EUR each and b) the size of these ferries: they were enormous. Clearly in the high season there must be a lot of tourists travelling to and from. The crossing was brief and uneventful apart from a shock at the canteen where a selection of unpalatable dishes were served, including fried 'custard cakes'.

A bus waited for us on arrival and transported us to Den Berg, the largest town on the island. After a rather unnecessary trip to the VVV (aka the Tourist Office) we made our way through the quaint village centre and met a delightful man who we hired great bikes from at the princely sum of 6EUR. He asked for ID but in what we found an unrivalled sign of trust of ages past no credit card imprints.

By 1130 we were off on our way to the north west coast of the island, cycling down the amply sized fietspads. My first impression was that I was still on the mainland: the island is large (24km) and completely rural dedicated to the hundreds of lambs and sheep and miscellanous animals (including goats, cocks, llamas, canadian geeze, black swans ...). The smell of sileage is omnipresent. In no time at all we arrived at the bird reserve of de Slufter and parked our bikes to walk out along the sand spit and into the bird reserve, half expecting Bill Oddie to jump out at any moment. It is a beautifully tranqil area, whose silence is occasionally broken by the sounds of falcolns shrieking as they strike their prey or the cacophony of gulls in some ornate mating ritual. Most of the area we were in was a protecting sanctuary inaccessible until August as the birds were nesting.

We returned to our bikes and cycled to the northern most tip of the island where there was a rocky outcrop and a lighthouse with some lean toos of houses, unfortunately there were stern KEEP OUT signs everywhere so we couldnt' approach. We stopped on the top of the strand which resembled, other than the sea colour, the kind of extended Bahaman majesty one often sees in toursit brochures.

By this time the stomachs were growelling and we headed off the short distance to the local town of de Cocksdorp, which was literally a two lane affair with a couple of shops and restaurants. The local fair was pretty simple with restaurants offering pizza or local dishes. We settled on the Topina as there was a substantial outside seating area and more guests there than anywhere else. Refreshed with a strange maaltijdsalade of 'lambham' and a selection of local cheeses we got back on the bikes - which were delightful for hire bikes: good breaks and gears and solid construction - down the curiously named 'Lancasterdijk' to cross back to the otherside of the island and explore the most popular town known as de Koog.

We had a tough cycle into the wind and 'at our own risk' along the steep seaside of the dijk, but we made it in the end, to the rather pedestrian and cookie cutter town of de Koog. After making the executive decision to not even stop we continued out along the bike path to a quietly shaded wooded area: as the weather had become really quite warm and sunny by this stage it was a welcome break. Crunching along the path strewn with needles and pine cones we followed the path into a heather moor and then to what was referred to as 'Westerslag' or a promentary along the beach.

Wondering what on earth this meant (slag means 'whipped' from slagroom 'whipped cream) we arrived through a cutting in the dunes to this incredible stretch of beach going on as far as the eye could see in either direction. It was such a great moment after the day of cycling to arrive here and share an ice lolly surrounded by such natural splendour and sun just thinking about begining to set.

We slowly cycled back through the forest to the main town of den Burg, ditching our bikes there and enjoying the delightfully joined up public transport of bus to ferry to bus to train all arriving within 5m of each other and arriving back in Amsterdam at 2000, almost exactly 12 hours after we started.

I'm looking forwatd to exploring more of the Netherlands, every time I leave Amsterdam some new surprise seems to await me ...