Me
The Other One (Jerry)
A down day, still couldn't lose the bikes though.
Really the trip was a bit of a comedy of errors, heres how it goes.
Saturday evening, ride across London to Liverpool Street station for Harwich and the overnight ferry to The Hook. Half way along kensington High Street, (bombing along, I'm up for this been dreaming of nothing else for weeks), look round, wheres he gone, how can I lose him? he's wearing a Hi Vis coat for goodness sake; but I had and this is virtually in home territory. Oh dear got him on the mobile, reassured he will find the station, and we continue along our chosen routes. I arrive at station at about the time I had planned with loads of time to spare and this is an early train so no probs if we miss it theres a couple more that catch the boat, the journey has begun. Anyway Jerry hasn't arrived after about twenty minutes so on the phone, yes he's OK just a minor navigational error wont be long and sure enough after ten minutes there he is. Now I had a couple of Vapps before I left home and of course an hour later I'm flying and well in to it, but I'm getting the feeling that my mates almost legendary absent mindedness may have entered a different level as he hadn't had a smoke for a bit.
So here we go, Train, Harwich,Ferry, its quite a nice boat fairly big and comfortable for an overnight trip, we get on board bags in cabins and down the restaurant for a good meal (nothing memorable though), meanwhile that familiar shudder goes through the ship as the engines are fired up, and we are truly on our way. after dinner its a stroll out on to the afterdeck for a couple of single skinners and off to our cabins for a good nights sleep.
Early call relatively as our clocks go forward an hour but hardly jet lag, so get some breakfast grab our bags and down to the car deck for bikes ready to hit those Dutch fietspads, and not a few coffee shops. Nice wake up down on the car deck as there were about a dozen bikers with such classic machines as Triumph Bonnevilles, BSA Gold Stars even a 650 fish tail Matchless. And as the doors were opened, they fired them up, that was a good blast. So the plan is to ride up to Ijmuiden for our first stop and a down day for acclimatization purposes. Its a good distance but do-able on a good day with a little help from the wind, well it was a good day but no help from the wind I fear, in fact we had a 15 to 20 right in our faces from the off, anyway in the Hook it was far too early on a sunday morning (about 0730 I think) for any smokies so we would check out the one in sheveningen but even it might be too early for that. and so it proved. As we were really batting the wind all the way I didn't really want to go right into The Hague cos that would have been a couple of hours and a bit off track as we follow the coast route, I dont think we wanted to jump on a train just yet, but if you are going from city to city you are never very far from a rail line, which is a blessing because I can only take so much discomfort. So no stopping at sheveningen, carry on north and see how far we go before we've had enough and by the mid afternoon we got to Noordwijk. They are supposed to have a coffee shop there, but I stayed there for a week once and never found it, however we stopped for solid fuel and decided to pull the plug on the bikeing for the day so rode about 6k inland to Lisse and got on the train. Change at Haarlem, at last, Green Leaves appear in my eyes. And so it is, off the train, down the road, Willies Sativa emporium. What can you say, Super Shiva comes to mind and it just took all the pain away in an instant and buzzed me up beautifully. I think the drug industry must be one of the herbs loudest enemies as I think they would take a hit from legalisation. So a couple of spliffs later we are on the other train up to some little place because Ijmuiden doesn't have a working rail station anymore but just a couple of K into town, check in the hotel and its out on the town ha ha! Funny little place Ijmuiden, its a working town of ships, they have the big sea locks there for the ships coming down to Amsterdam, a massive steel mills across the waterway and the sort of people you find in those kind of places its not on the tourist track. Also two lovely Coffee Shops, obviously from the nature of the place they are "locals" but very welcoming to two strangers, I had twenty years at sea in my younger days so I feel comfortable round the docks and the dirt, no Ijmuiden is a lovely clean town well the bit you can see
I didn't keep much of a list of what and where I smoked it but our first smoke in the town was Amnezia Haze in the Scolo and as it's the first time I smoked it I thought it was a beautiful smoke with a really nice flavour, and it was 7e/gr, and also I now realize that the Amnezia is not in its title by chance, a brilliant Coffee Shop, internet vapourizer and vap/bong big gadget. Long day many miles ridden nice gentle walk through Ijmuiden thats it for day one.
more from the trip later.
