Day 4. Vierhuizen to DelfzijL.
As we warmed up and got going we wondered what the day was going to hold in store. Damae and I were struggling a bit, for some reason Damae more so than me. We were carrying the most weight, in my case around eight kilogrames of tent, the price to pay for all that space and luxury. We have also noticed that the colder the weather the harder the cycling is, so this could also have been a factor. Still, we managed to keep up with the other two and comforted ourselves with the fact that the day was going to be somewhat shorter than the previous two.
The weather had become overcast and the wind was by now quite fierce. The route zig-zagged a fair bit across the bare polder landscape and as we turned North or South, we got the tailwind as a sidewind. We were glad not to be going the other way. During the morning session we came across three couples going the other way. They were not going very quickly at all, and I had some sympathy for them. In contrast to the lovely dune sections on the West Coast of the Netherlands there is a lot of sameness in the North East region of the Dutch NSCR and hence not that much to see.
However that is not to say that there is nothing interesting to see between Vierhuizen and Delfzijl. As we cycled further, the long polder sections under the grey sky, with brown earth and green grass were punctuated by villages and hamlets with more wonky churches and other old buildings. Whilst I took no pictures before lunch, Paul did his best to snap a few of the interesting buildings. It was however too cold to stand around for any length of time, and there were few places where we could shelter from the wind.
After passing through Kleine Huisjes (small houses) which consisted of normal sized houses we were back in open countryside. In the middle of the morning we passed over an internal dyke and saw one of the many lock gates that are to be seen in this area. They allow boats to travel but can also be closed to protect the land behind it should the outer sea dyke fail. The same sort of division of polders with dykes is to be seen in the much more recent Flevopolder in the middle of the Netherlands.
Ten minutes later or so we stopped by a sign to Cafe 't Zielhoes near Usquert, and Paul took this classic view of the Dutch polder landscape. It is apparently the most northerly cafe in Noordpolderzijl and from internet links looks like it might have been worth the extra effort. We did consider stopping for a cuppa until we realised that a) we would have a stiff headwind when returning to the route and b) we were not really ready for a long stop.
An hour later whilst passing through ''t Lage van de Weg', Paul discovered that he had already opened a photography business without knowing it! It also seemed to have had a church worth photographing, although the angle of the tower was not due to subsidence this time. The picture does give you a good idea of the grey sky we had been cycling through since the last of the sun left us in Vierhuizen.