Today was my first day of skating. This stage was probably the longest of my whole trip. It was planned to be 57 kilometres, but due to some unintended detours, it ended up being 63 kilometres in thirty degrees Celsius.
I started from Bakkum outside Amsterdam shortly before nine o’clock. Skating with a backpack (which I couldn’t motivate myself to do during my training) was not too bad. I packed as little as possible, so the backpack only weighs seven kilos including a polar bear.
The roads were very nice to start with. There are a lot of bike lanes in the Netherlands which I can use. Unfortunately, I learned today that whatever Google Maps finds suitable for cyclists, does not need to be appropriate whatsoever for a skater. I took a little tour into a dune nature reserve which was indeed pretty, but the brick paved route was terrible. So I turned around after a two kilometres, but had to continue another five or six kilometres on bad roads until I came back to a nice bicycle lane.
For the rest of the day, the roads were very good, and the landscape was picturesque. Shortly before the end of the trip today, I crossed the dyke between the Amstelmeer and the sea, and after four hours, I reached Hippolytushof, a cosy little town a few kilometres away from the IJsselmeer.
Tomorrow, I want to start early because the weather forecast predicts thunderstorms in the late afternoon. I first have to reach the Afsluitdijk which is currently closed for cyclist and hence for me as well. There I will take the cyclists’ bus and continue on skates towards Leeuwarden – a total of fifty kilometres, unless I include some unplanned detours again.
