Tuesday 19th:

Leaving Deventer it pissed down! Just AFTER I’d brought down the tent but BEFORE I’d packed anything! Crunt! The weather was ace up until now. I left Deventer wet and mad, aiming for Kampen, near Zwolle. I quickly realised my legs were totalled from the day before. My speed was sitting around 17kph. I was STUFFED! It took 2.5hrs to get to Zwolle (narrowly missing a frog on the way). I did Deventer to Zwolle quicker than that the day before, including being lost for an hour!

For some reason, the route this day was 40k and not 30k though? WTF?!

DEVENTER to ZWOLLE STATS (including around town):

57.6k, 9h 44m (not all riding), 5.9kph avg. spd. ahahaha!

Crawled into the tourist office (VVV) and asked for a B&B booking. Sitting down must’ve rested me up because I turned down the 40euro/night B&B and decided I would camp again, but not in Kampen, I’d stay in Zwolle at “De Agnietenberg” camp ground. It was about 4k from the Centrum (following the map from VVV) and costs $9.85 per night for 1-man/1-tent in spot W9. Showers were operated with an electronic tag. $20 deposit for the tag and then you charge it up at reception – 50c per 6min of shower time.

Into town I stopped at the first pub I saw – Sally O’Briens Irish pub. Irish pubs tend to attract English speakers which is good because I was too tired to repeat everything three times. I think I speak too fast and too much like an Aussie?

Right about now I’m thinking I’d like to be in London with some mates, a regular job, regular bed, regular food, etc. Oh, and my FUCK TERRORISTS t-shirt.

Anyway, guy behind the bar was cool and turned the TdF on the projector. He’d lived and worked in Oz and was a good chat. I grabbed some Bitterballs ($3.60 for a bunch), a few pints of Kilkenny ($4ea) and a Chilli Con Carne baked spud ($5.70).

Ended up chatting to one of the staff, Eva (pronounced Eba) who was from Catalonia, Spain. Her boyfriend rocked up and turned out to be a super-friendly Dutch guy, who was straight away offering his dryer because he knows how much putting on wet clothes sucks! 🙂

Ended up hanging out with a whole bunch of people from Sally O’s: Mark, the Dutch boyfriend of Eva, the Spanish chick. A really nice girl from California (I forget your name!) who was over here because her Dad was Dutch and she wanted some insight into her heritage. She inspired me to think about Scotland and my heritage some more. Last year I paid a short visit to Peterhead (where my family has a lot of history) but more time in Scotland would give me a chance to dig deeper. Also Jill, the nutty Irish girl, who ended up quite wasted as far as I could tell.

We finished drinking at SO’s and headed to the Flying Horse (‘cept the name is written in Dutch so I don’t know it) near the Melkmart. It was a cool student cafe with cheap food and drink. Eg. I thought I’d just bought the first round of drinks where I’d actually paid for the drinks and the meals! Told you it was cheap! I think the lasagne was $3.50 a pop?

Mark spoke to the people there who opened up the internet cafe up-stairs for me to use. The coin-op machine was broken so Internet use was free. In fact, it was better than free – repeatedly inserting a coin clocked up my online time but it also spat out about 4 euro in other coins. Thankyou! 😀

Back to Sally O’s (getting lost and doing about four return trips to the Flying Horse!) and then on to Eva’s house for more beers. I met her flatmates Dan and someone else who’s name I forget.

After some mobile phone/people hassles we made it to “De Joffer” a packed out club that has 50c beers from 11-12!!

That night I was “one of Sally O’s staff”.

“How do you know we work for Sally O’s?”

“You speak english. There’s some more of you lot inside.” 😀

Did the usual nightclub things and left around 2.30am. Now, where the fsck is my bike?! I walked around for a while before I found it and then took off towards tent city, stopping for “Anti-hangover chips” and a drink. It took me an hour to get home!