Here I was Day 1 of my first ever Tour ... and I was solo !
I had been to the Tour de France finale on the Champs Elysee yesterday and had missed my train due partly to the traffic and having to get my bike in a bag between Gare du Nord & Gare de L'Este and partly due to me not putting my watch one hour forward when I crossed the Channel Tunnel that morning.
I arrived at my hotel in Amsterdam after a much later train at Midnight and spent an hour assembling my bike ( I didn't even know the pedals were opposite threads !
But I was off in the morning into town and the ferry across to North Amsterdam and headed north up through Purmerend and after about 30 miles I stopped at a cafe in Opmeer for lunch. I was navigating via my Garmin but I didn't have any european maps loaded so I had the very basic default map which pretty much only has motorways on and my route showed as a pink line which I was following without anything else on display. I stopped the Garmin then forgot to restart it after dinner so the miles up to Den Oever went unlogged. It seemed to take an age on flat roads to reach the Afsluitdyke but my first view of the Ijsselmeer was impressive and picked me up. There was a great cyclepath separated from the motorway and a steady stream of cyclists crossing it despite the fact it is 9 miles long. I stoppped halfway across where there was a statue to the builders of the dyke as well as a service station. Near both ends were huge sluice gates and pumps which I assume run constantly to drain the Inner Sea into the North Sea. The dyke is built at the North Sea so the cyclepath and motorway are a few metres below and there is no view of the North Sea, just the Inner Sea. It had been a long day and a tougher ride than I expected and after the dyke I had about 26 miles still to go along small roads which seemed to take forever until I could see the City of Leeuwarden come into view and my Hotel was a mile south of the Centre in Goutum. I showered and changed then didn't even go into the City, preferring to eat in and spend the night relaxing.