Blue on a Bike

It's summer again, so of course I'm tour cycling. A little different than last year though, as I have no job I'm returning to. Back in May I'd had enough. Too many yelling matches with children. Too many increases to teacher workload. Too many moments burnt out and exhausted. I handed my notice in with no real plan, only knowing what I didn't want to do. I've been in education in some form or another from the age of 4. Time to see if the grass is greener on the other side. It was easier for me than others because I don't have a mortgage and kids to look after - multiple teachers have said they'd be leaving too but now they're trapped. Did have to book my flight home in advance though so I don't accidentally keep going forever - being free of all responsibility is nice, but as Kundera knows, there is an unbearable lightness to being so unanchored to anything.

Trophies from my time in the trenches

I don't really know what I'm gonna do next, although some ideas are taking shape. Right now I'm in the woods just waiting for a clearing.* My next path will surely reveal itself to me when it's good and ready.

Enough about the boring life stuff, back to what really matters: cycle touring. I planned myself a lovely route up to Copenhagen along the coast, through the flattest parts of Europe, heading north, chasing the cooler weather. My France trip was fun, but my God it was hot. I set out from Leeds, along the Humber, and out to Rotterdam on the ferry. There is a real satisfaction to setting off straight from your front door. Stops people saying you cheated (although there's always one smart-alec who says "Oh what so you cycled across the water did you?").

It could be Rotterdam, or anywhere...

I know people say it a lot, but the Netherlands is a fantastic country to cycle through. It is a place where bikes are prioritised just as much as cars. The network is all encompassing, a web of perfectly maintained mini bicycle high ways, often with lanes going either way, and a dashed meridian to boot, with a separate path for pedestrians. Their Knoopputen system has created an intricate game of cycle by numbers. Every 5km or so there is a map board with a number that acts as a way point. You just write down your numbers and follow the route from sign to sign.**

The extent to which the Dutch attitude is different from the UK really showed itself on the 6th day. There were some electrical works, so a section of the cycle route was closed. To accommodate, they had a genuine diversion route set up, complete with signs, just like they would for cars back home. By contrast I'm regularly on a cycle path in Leeds that disappears into nothingness, unconnected patches that are there to get cyclists out the way of the cars rather than facilitate a safe ride.

The Knoopputen in all its glory ft. my cheat sheet for not getting lost

It's not just the routes though - it's a whole outdoor culture. A Dutch tour cyclist I shared an afternoon with said the government has a slogan it's pushing: Sitting is the new smoking. And they've really taken it to heart. It feels like everyone is outside all the time going who knows where. On the coast it actually got a bit much. Electric bikes have taken the Netherlands by storm, so I spent my first few days being constantly overtaken by geriatric couples and tall suntanned families on their summer vacation.

My Dutch friend taking a picture of the Hamburg industrial dock

I decided to leave my planned route and cut inland to Utrecht. I then freestyled my way through some beautiful national parks using the Knoopputen, gunning for the German Border. No wild camping though, because as I said, everyone in the Netherlands is constantly outside (struggled to pee even without someone cycling past and saying hello).

Sprechen Sie Englisch?

The German border was a real let down. Absolutely no marker to say I'd changed country, not even a small sign to take a picture with. It didn't take long to feel like I was in Germany though. For one, religion is everywhere, every village covered in emaciated Jesus dying for our sins. Then the cycle network began to drop all of it's curves through forests and canals. Direct routes on the side of B-roads leading to the next small town. Very efficient, very German. The further I got from the border, the more the cycle paths began to resemble home, until I had to abandon them entirely because they were too cracked and bumpy.

But with it, I gained what I'd been missing in the Netherlands - a bit of solitude. The Germans are clearly all sitting somewhere, or have no where else to be. Whole days where I'd see no other riders. Time to talk to myself, sing, zig-zag across the route trying to balance with no hands. No one was there to see me sneak into a forest and set up camp for the night. My kilometer count slowly crept up till I mashed out a 90km day through Bremen. The more time I spent alone, the more my social inhibitions fell away. I arrived in Hamburg feeling very much the unmasked wild savage I am, ready to talk shit with whatever unsuspecting hostel-goer fell into my path.

Hamburgers do not come from Hamburg***

The history of Hamburg is pretty linear. In the early days, the Vikings loved coming down on their holibobs to have a quick pillage and wreck the place. Since then though they've established themselves as an important trade market, and became a free city state of merchants. They were rich, and they still are rich, and they will probably continue to stay rich for the forceable. Some claim 1 in 10 Hamburgers are millionares although the internet says its more like 1 in 769. When Hamburg joined the German Federation, all the merchants got pissed about taxes, so only joined on the proviso that they could have their own little duty free area on the docks where they didn't have to pay tariffs. So their biggest tourist attraction, the UNESCO Speicherstadt (warehouse district) was made purely for tax dodging.

I of course am only telling half the story. I'm currently camped out at a hostel in the super left wing sector, with delicious cheap food and graffiti round every corner. Every economic sector needs it's counter-balance, and St. Pauli is just that. I don't know how the bars keep running, cause everyone sits on benches or crates outside kiosks (mini-convenience stores) and drinks on the street. Okay enough writing, time for some rest and recovery before heading up to Denmark. The open road calls.

Tangerines had become my trademark at school - more on that if I get round to writing about it

***

*Being in Germany has transported me back to my heady days in Durham studying Heidegger. Lichtung or clearing is this concept of his where in lovely moments of clarity things become unconcealed to us. "Only this clearing grants and guarantees to us humans a passage to those beings that we ourselves are not, and access to the being that we ourselves are." Those moments opposite to "Can't see the wood for the trees." Heidegger of course thinks these moments come in part from the wake up call of Being-towards-death: the realisation that you will die one day and your life is finite. Hopefully in my case a bit of cycling and writing will do the same job.

**They have a similar system for hiking too, and even the docks through the intricate canal networks. People say the Germans are organised, but the Dutch have perfected infostructure.

***The patty in the middle does, but like all things fast food, the Americans took it and made it their own. Interesting linguistic phenomenon though - Hamma means curve in a river, and burg means fortress. But there has been a rebracketing in English where Ham is connected to the new suffix -burger. Beefburger, Chicken Burger, etc. So a cheeseburger is more accurately a person living in a fortress made of gouda.