Back in Blighty
And so we come to the end of our 2025 European cycling adventure.
We had a fabulous four days in Delft, relaxing after our three continuous weeks of cycling. The hotel, part of the Social Hub group, was outstanding. Julie had only booked it because it was cheap, but it turned out to be probably the best hotel environment we’ve ever stayed. Neither of us had heard of the Social Hub before but we discovered it had been set up by a young Glaswegian guy, initially as an alternative form of student accommodation, but more recently morphed into a relaxed and friendly hotel environment, with a social conscience. They cater for students, hotel guests and business people, providing short and long-term stays, with co-working spaces. There are now around 15 operating in Europe. All very cool. We were checked in by Jennifer from Cheshire and later met the hotel manager, Sarah, from Timaru/Wellington. One of the best bits for Julie was the laundry facilities. They have an app where you can book washing machines and driers and, once you’ve got your washing underway (with washing powder automatically pre-loaded), you get a notification when the cycle is nearing completion. The Laundry Queen was in her personal heaven - two loads were washed and dried during the afternoon we arrived and one more on a later day. The hotel also did a great buffet breakfast which we enjoyed on all four mornings.
While in Delft, we took the opportunity to do some exploring off the bikes. Being right next to both the central bus and train stations, it was all so simple. I hadn’t realised just how compact the Netherlands is - Rotterdam is only 15km from Delft and even Amsterdam is only 70km away. We went on day trips by train to Leiden (oldest university in the Netherlands, birthplace of Rembrandt and, like so many Dutch cities, built around a network of canals), Gouda (of the cheese fame - on a Thursday for the weekly cheese market day, now largely for tourist benefit), Utrecht (medieval city with canals) and also wandered around Delft itself. All were lovely - lots of old buildings, canals, interesting shops, relaxed outdoor eating and drinking places and all full of life. All in all, we loved the Netherlands. Ironically, I’d previously dismissed the Netherlands for cycling as being too flat to be interesting. As we found out, the combination of the best cycling infrastructure in the world, the gorgeous cities and villages - and the short distances between them, the great food and drink, and the friendliness of the locals (not to mention their amazing spoken English), made for an excellent cycling destination. I’m keen to return.
Our last day in the Netherlands saw us cycle the short 20km from Delft to Hook of Holland. After a quick celebratory beer in the town, we biked to the local beach which was full of day trippers (there’s a train terminus essentially in the sand dunes!). We had a meal, using up some of our last Euro, before heading back to the town and then to the ferry terminal and onto the ferry itself with about 10 other cyclists amongst the motor vehicles. Another meal, counting down the very last of our Euro, and it was off to bed in our little inside cabin.
In the morning, as with our outbound sailing two months previously, we were treated to the strains of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” at 6:30AM (5:30AM UK time) as a wake-up call. Once off the boat, we cycled into Old Harwich town centre and, with no sign of life in the early morning, we biked to Dovercourt for breakfast at 8:30AM. Back at Harwich, we caught the first cross-River Stour ferry of the day at 9:50AM. This was marked by a brief flurry of excitement when, while removing panniers to get the bikes on the ferry, one of Julie’s bags fell off the wharf into the water and started floating away. Thankfully, it was retrieved by one of the boat crew using a boat hook. As he said: “good thing it’s waterproof”. The 7-minute ferry journey took us across to Shotley where we got on our bikes again for the last leg of our journey.
We’d previously assumed we’d just take trains to London, as we’d done on the outbound trip, but Julie suggested we could bike back to Bedford. Looking into it, there’s a Sustrans route (Route 51) between Colchester and Oxford that incorporates both Harwich and Bedford. That portion is around 185km, so we planned our trip over three days. Although something of a last-minute tag-on to our journey, it turned out to be a really enjoyable ride. Apart from passing through some less attractive parts of Ipswich, it took in some lovely countryside, villages and towns, mostly on cycle paths or quiet lanes. Our lunch stop on the first day was a good marker - realising it was a Sunday, I suggested we should look for a pub lunch for Sunday lunch. We settled on one in Needham Market - bream and prawns on a mash base with green vegetables, with a lovely pint of beer, in an outdoor eating area on a hot summer afternoon - happy days!
The next day was right out of the box. We set off early, knowing it was going to get hot - into the 30s. It was a lovely cool morning ride, with that feel of heat building, through the little village of Woolpit, and then onto the bustling town of Bury St Edmunds for morning tea. After cycling through the grounds of the abbey, we found a cafe. Which did long blacks. And which had some amazing-looking sausage rolls on the counter. I can confirm they were superb. Back on the bikes, we cycled through quiet lanes - many tree-lined and cool thankfully, to a pub in Barrow for another excellent lunch. About an hour later, we dropped down a small hill to be greeted by a lovely medieval humpbacked bridge in a village. With a pub just beyond. It was actually Julie, not me, who suggested we should go in for a drink to rehydrate…
We stayed the night at a B&B in Newmarket and it was pretty disillusioning to see the sheer volume of commuter traffic going through the town as we set off in the morning- I reckon the occupancy rate must have been less than 1.1. Once clear of the town, though, our final day on the bikes was another lovely one. We passed through villages with half-timbered houses, thatched rooves and pastel paints (surprisingly similar to those we’d seen in Denmark) and more gentle English countryside - crop fields, tree-lined rural lanes and woods. Morning tea stop was at a little cafe opposite Newnham College in Cambridge. The lovely Turkish owner was very excited about our travels and presented Julie with a little flapjack to go with her coffee.
From Cambridge, the route became more and more familiar as we approached Bedford, where I’d lived for 12 years. We stopped for lunch at a pub in Sandy which, the manager proudly told us, had won CAMRA’s Most Improved Pub award for Bedfordshire in 2024, followed up by winning the 2025 Best Pub award. The remaining 15km was almost entirely on the former Oxford - Cambridge rail line, sections of which I used to run down years ago when marathon training.
We arrived, anticlimactically, at Sam and Sarah’s house in Bedford in mid-afternoon. No dramas - just got off our bikes and started to settle into domestic life again, with the added pleasure of being able to wear some different clothes after two months of cycling attire almost every day.
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