Anniversary Waltz – a mini tour.

Posted by on 3, Aug 2025 in 2025 - Europe, Benelux, Europe, Tilly the Tandem, UK

Anniversary Waltz – a mini tour.

We visit a lot of hotels so get to use all sorts of different showers, from buckets to multi jet rainfall showers.

One thing most have in common is the lengths they go to to make it hard to read the shower controls by making the temperature and shower flow knobs chrome and the instructions for want of a better description ‘off chrome’ which make reading it, without your glasses in a steamy room almost impossible so with unbridled joy and with a deepening sense of ‘oh you’re really getting old now, getting excited about this sort of thing’ we found our first hotel on this little trip had blue and red on the temperature control.

I mean who’d have thought of that eh?, blue for cold and red for hot – that’s so weird isn’t it….Not….But as I say this type of excitement only occurs in us old people. Now what was I saying…

Oh yes, 30 years ago this week, in as Giles cartoons used to call it, ‘Flaming June’ Linda’s dad and I were hurtling around Norwich trying to hire space heaters to keep a marquee warm and prevent frostbite in our guests for Linda and and I’s wedding.

Linda had already been in tears with the temperature and then it started to rain.

As it was the day was very cold at 9C with a late afternoon high of 11C with scattered showers and late evening sunshine that helped thaw the snow. We even managed a bit of a ice cricket outside the marquee to warm people up! (not really that cold but you get the idea!)

My uncle kept his duffel coat on all day and we had to warm the wine up to make it palatable…

But it was a great day nonetheless. Linda was driven to the registry office by her dad in our strawberry white convertible Morris Minor which surprisingly didn’t break down twice on route and there was no chickening out for me as my mum actually married us. The last official wedding she performed. And of course, the best.

Needless to say we entered the registry office  to the Deep Space Nine theme tune and had a Star Trek cake. Linda sadly wouldn’t go for the Dianna Troy and Captain Picard outfits I’d bought.

Ironically a few days after the wedding the arctic weather vanished to be replaced by a heat wave for months and a high of 35C.

Anyway, here we are 30 years later in our favourite country in the freezing cold with a hooley blowing and enough rain to make the Thai monsoon season jealous and of course loving it!

The wind, thank Zephrus the Greek god of the west wind, has been behind us all day and the next day as we change direction it was behind us again.

The Netherlands is Gods own country for cycling as you will know. So much so on the ferry a few Dutch people returning from the UK couldn’t believe just how awful our cycling infrastructure was in the UK. They were complaining about all the ridiculous cycle barriers (the same ones the Dutch use to keep cycles off footpaths!) and having to cycle on roads. And this wasn’t even to me, they were having a good debrief amongst themselves!

These guys cant wait to get back on the Dutch cycle routes !

But once you hit the Dutch cycle network you realise just how much of a culture shock the UK is compared to NL, which is one reason we so enjoy being here.

Having had to be in the UK over the last few weeks for some horrendous dental work – 6 needles prodded into the gum around each tooth, twice, 11 injections twice and not being able to eat for a few days twice meant poor Linda who endured all this heroically was ecstatic to be back and cycled along with a grin on her face tucked up behind copious layers of water proofs and thermals. Just like 1995 all over again…

We’d had a lovely cycle down to Harwich almost directly from the dentist – how lucky am I to be married to someone who’s just had 240 needles stuck into her gums and then says “Now let’s cycle to Harwich”. You can see why I never argue with a Yarmouth woman…

But we woke to a wild wet and cold morning in the Hook. Being old hands at the customs here we managed to skip most of the queue for customs by going to the EU only passport booth. For some reason here they take all passports at all booths but not many people know that. Sssshhhh!

A brand new cafe had opened just outside the port where we could stop for a coffee and breakfast to pluck up the energy to cycle on. But as the wind was largely in our favour we cruised up the coastal cycle path with hardly another cyclist about.

Our tour consisted of short cycles, luxury hotels and much eating, particularly over our Anniversary where we had two nights in a very posh hotel that was more like a cruise ship inside.  We collared a prime seat within site of the bar and had bubbles and cocktails with some very nice nosh and enjoyed it so much we came back the next night for a repeat performance.  The staff knew us by then, not sure what that says about our behaviour but we are putting it down to ‘the fussy vegetarians’ not the boozy Brits!  

Moving on we stopped in at Utrecht which we much prefer to Amsterdam before visiting our friends for a long weekend and obviously indulged in all our favourite Dutch pancakes. Well you’ve got to haven’t you, and for anyone who has never had a Dutch pancake – you have to try it, they’re fantastic and we can’t figure out why they don’t catch on in England. I mean it’s cheese and syrup, fried, you’d think that would be right up the fast food brigades street!

Our last day of this short hop was back from Naarden where our friends live to the Hook and Zephrus had a strop on and had a strong breeze blowing against us no matter which way we turned. But we had all day to get to the Hook and rolled up on the beach for dinner in plenty of time covering 110km and being overtaken by over 12,000 pensioners on electric bikes all chatting merrily away to each other and looking not at all out of breath or even as if it was any effort at all. 23kph and they sailed by us. The best we could manage was to tuck in behind them for short stretches and get a temporary wind break, but tempting as moving to the dark side is on days like this, if you can still haul 30kg of luggage into the “Dutch mountains” and cover 110km and not be too bothered by it then the Dark Side can wait..

Still smiling after 30 years !

3 Comments

  1. 30 years and Linda still looks as good now as she did then, Jon however……..🤣🤣🤣

  2. And of course congratulations 🥳

  3. Many congratulations sgsin to you both. Super blog too. The dark side is coming – and you will never look back!

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