NORTH SEA PROLOGUE
Here we go again!!
Having recovered from last year's LEJOG adventure I am now ready for the next one.
Darren Baker from the Wheelers suggested that a suitable challenge is to do part of the North Sea Cycle Route. "The what? "you may say!
The NSCR follows the coast of the North Sea (surprise, surprise!) from Harwich to Hook van Holland, along the Dutch, German and Danish coast, across the Skagerak to Sweden, the eastern Swedish coast and the southern and western Norwegian coast to  Orkney, Shetland, Scotland and back home again. All in all approx 3,500 miles which unfortunately (!!!??) exceeds our holiday allowance But we will do an abbreviated version and return to the UK via Esbjerg in Denmark i.e. "only" do 1000 miles.
The terrain is (in contrast to last year's LEJOG route ) mainly flat and in theory the winds should be behind us (in theory!!! that's where we were mistaken last year). We will keep the water and the beaches to our left and the land and public houses to our right - how can we fail?
I have decided to up the physical challenge by doing the ride on my 1957 fixed-gear Mercian (i.e. no gears and no freewheel) whereas Darren will use his Cross bike or similar (but then he is a lawyer so clearly he knows better!). We will travel lightly mainly carry samples of the local beer houses internally and chamois creme externally (plus water proofs etc).
We will set off on Saturday August 23rd at 1400 hrs with a pit, coffee and cake stop at Maglia Rosa just outside Bury St Eds (come and join us if you live nearby- their Brownies are "formidable"!).
We expect to return 2 weeks later on one of the last ferry connections ( the crossing terminates in September).
And why do we do it? Well, I hope to come up with a sensible answer over the next couple of weeks but so far it is because the route is there, we are here and we are still not so infirm (at least we do not think so) that we should not. So it's back in the saddle again and off we go - 9 days to take off; better think about packing. Now where is that bottle opener.......?