Day 36: Dordrecht Day 1, Saturday January 15th
After our sumptuous breakfast, for which our host brought in an array of yoghurt, fruit, meats, cheeses, boiled eggs, bread rolls, six varieties of other breads, freshly squeezed orange juice and coffee!!!! (you can be sure we only did justice to some of it), we indulged in the luxury of going back to bed for a couple of hours.
We met Robyn and Damien at their house at 12.30. They had hired bikes for us so that we could all go to Kinderdyke, the area not far from Dordrecht which has nineteen windmills still standing. These date back to the 1700’s, when their purpose was to pump water from the fields and channel it into the dykes which in turn flowed into the river. It’s all done mechanically now of course, so probably in years to come, windmills will only be a memory for Holland. These ones are famous because there are so many of them together and because they are still being lived in and maintained – another of the many UNESCO Heritage projects that we have seen on our travels.
The trip involved a ten minute bike ride through the cobbled streets of Dordrecht, a twenty minute ferry trip and then a 4km ride to the area of the windmills. Now most will remember that Roger and exercise don’t really mix well: his tennis comeback in 2010 caused him to break his shoulder blade in three places. Well we don’t think it is quite so bad this time, but he has certainly quite badly injured his other shoulder – not to mention his ego.
We were riding down a gentle hill, going around a curve with quite a strong wind buffeting the bikes around. Rog doesn’t really know what happened, but he remembers heading into a lamp post and down he went. By the time I was able to get off my bike and get to him, he was on the ground groaning about pain in his shoulder. A man driving a van pulled up immediately and a lady came out of her house. They offered to call an ambulance but after a while we got Roger sitting up and he seemed to be OK and able to move his arm, so we decided the ambulance wasn’t necessary. The lady took us all into her house for a cup of tea, during which time the colour returned to Roger’s face and he decided to try to continue the journey.
The rest of the trip turned out to be fine, with Roger able to ride OK without too much pain. The windmills were very interesting and we were able to go inside one which has been set up to show how people used to live in them. We were astounded to see a photograph of a family with about twelve children – most of them teenagers, who obviously used to live in it. Goodness they would have been cramped!
It was dark by the time we got back to the house. Rob and Damo’s friends Jeremy and Juni were coming for dinner, along with Jeremy’s parents who are visiting. It was nice to do something normal like peel potatoes and make an apple crumble. We had a good chat with Jeremy's parents who live in Woodend and who were also travelling in England last week. By coincidence it happened that we were all on the same flights from Bristol to Amsterdam.
By this time Roger’s shoulder was really starting to stiffen up and to be in considerable pain. He dosed up with Panadol and I rubbed Tigerbalm into it, both of which helped hime to sleep.
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