Minnie’s Musings

Namely windmills and Edam. Apparently we could also have visited a clog makers but we didn’t.

So after visiting an extremely picture-sque (my mother always pronounced it thus) set of windmills north of Amsterdam, took a tiny ferry across a zee and saved our pennies with sandwiches we decamped for Edam where they make the cheese. All very pretty. All very Dutch.

Observation for the day. Younger Dutch people are a little more friendly than older Dutch people. They are as aggressive behind the wheel on a motorway as the average Brit with too much power in his gear stick. But there is way, way more respect between cars and cyclists. This is to be expected. They have cycling infrastructure galore. Everyone is on a bike. To the point that we got a lot of funny looks when we schlepped down to the beach to look at the sea yesterday on foot rather than wheels. The only people walking were those wading through the dunes, through which you cannot peddle.

A sign of how safe Ditch people feel on a bike is the almost complete lack of helmets. As someone rather prone to falling off bicycles (on one occasion colliding with a lamppost), I find this foolish. As someone who almost got squashed between a BMW and a Mercedes on a Home Counties back road, I find this foolish. As someone who did her cycling proficiency in 1979., I find this foolish. Have these people never heard of brain injury??

I wonder what all the older cyclists who peddle briskly from home to work think of all the young people whizzing about on electric bikes, occasionally on their phones, usually in pairs and always missing the pedestrians they weave through by quite narrow margins.

No doubt this is a matter of inter generational spatting. At least I hope it is. I do so want Holland to be full of grumpy middle aged women.

Europeans always speak the local lingo to him. Not to me, who spends at least three aislesu of a large LeClerc practicing, “Avez vouchers une sac s’il vous plait”.