Before we depart on the 2nd of February we will have a few training runs on the bike. This weekend however had another important goal: giving my mum more information about our bike trip. By now she has seen our website, seen our movie about the Pyrenees trip and seen our bikes, though she still thinks we are a bit crazy and is worried what will happen with us along the way.

To further involve her in our preparations we cycled north-east to go and visit her. By visiting her I thought we could tell more about all the gear, gadgets and equipment we are carrying along with us. We camped in the garden and she got a feel what it would be like for us to camp every day (or at least very often). We also got the chance to test our new Katabatic Gear sleeping bags. We are very happy with these and they kept us nice and warm without overheating.

Our route was quite interesting for the Dutch flatlands. We headed out of Rotterdam and went past Lage Bergse Bos and Zevenhuizerplas in de direction of Gouda. Close to Gouda our GPS said we would be biking into water, but there was a road with which we crossed the Reeuwijkse Plassen. We headed for Woerden where we had lunch at a Greek Gyros place of which the guy thought we were mad by cycling 80 km in a day. And from there we went to Breukelen to show Nyenrode where I work. By then we were almost in Soest and had a really nice day with a good tailwind.

On the way back we went through posh Bosch en Duin and crossed underneath Utrecht. From there we followed the Hollandse Ijssel back to Rotterdam and chose our route from Prins Alexander north of Kralingse Plas. Today was a very different day compared to yesterday. We had a full headwind most of time which made the going quite slow. Also many of the roads were next to water. This made us be alert to the wind and the sudden wind gusts. We finished the weekend with 173 km on our counter. This morning we received some nice snacks for the trip from my mum: some licourice, drinks, chocolate and Chocolade Kruidnoten. Especially these last ones gave us some extra energy to cycle the kilometers today.

It feels good to have been biking for two full days again and it is especially nice to have shared more information about the things we are carrying on the bike with my mum. It was the next long awaited step in the preparations.