Sunset at the edge of the world

Today we cycled the 60 km from Alkmaar to Den Oever at the edge of the world. We had a generous breakfast at our B&B and spent some time chatting to the hosts who were wonderful people. We then cycled more or less north for a while, then at about the half way point changed to a generally north-east direction pretty much all the way until we arrived at Den Oever. The last few kilometres were through a wooded area which made a change from the relentless flatness of North Holland. We did spot more tulip fields so they are pretty much everywhere in North Holland.

We dropped our stuff at the B&B and then tried to find the bike bus across the sea wall to the visitors centre. My wife has been a bit disappointed with the general lack of tourist information, and while we found the bike bus stop there wasn't a timetable and the regular service bus even denied that it stopped where the timetable clearly said it did. Re-reading the poor web site of the visitors centre did explain what had happened - there are two different bus services that use the same route over the sea wall - one is just for the sea wall and is free for cycle users, but it has a limited schedule. The second is a regular service bus which goes from town to town - via the sea wall. Both stop where we wanted to go, but clearly the bus driver wasn't interested in picking up a pair of confused foreigners.

After that failure we bought dinner from the supermarket and wandered back to our B&B. After eating another salad and bread we went for a walk - behind the B&B and found the harbour and then went along the sea wall to see what we could find.

The main picture is a view out though a bit of a ruin looking out across the sea to the island of Texel (not visible) . Two of the extras are basically the same, one from the viewing platform and the second from the second from the sea wall. At the end of the harbour there was a viewing platform built on a stilt over the water (final extra). It was a bit windy, but the view was pretty good and it was different from tulip fields.

Den Oever is pretty tiny but it was pretty enough and the B&B was functional if a little industrial. Cycling through the woods was fun and did make a change from canals and tulips!