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Day 2. Hoog Soren to de Bijland contd.

A few hundred metres further up their advice turned out to be true. After a short section of tarmac and grit barely wider than the trikes (see video) the track turned into a less hard surface around twenty centimetres narrower. Both front wheels had to cycle off the track which knocked down our speed once again. Still the trikes did not seem to be complaining which was good. We had already come to the conclusion that the Trice NT and Scorpion are about as wide as you can usefully use in the Netherlands. They fitted (just) between all of the bollards in cycle tracks and other impediments we had encountered so far, and this held true during the rest of the weekend

Some of the spaces we had to negotiate left a couple of centimetres of play. On our touring bikes we would have been able to maintain full speed through such sections. On the trikes we had to slow down to a crawl to make sure we didn't hit anything with the front wheels. Whereas the stability of the wider versions would be nice, it makes them pretty much unusable here.

We headed on towards Hoenderloo where we stopped for a chips and 'kaassouffle' (deep fried pillow of dough filled with molten cheese) lunch across the road from the 'Nederlands Elektriciteit en techniek Museum'. The food was hot and edible and washed down with some refreshing fizzy pop. We felt invigorated and headed in good spirits back to the trikes. The only disadvantage of this establishment was the deep gravel in the car park. We struggled out onto the road and immediately I realised that the tyre we had already fixed was flat again. Walking the trike to a wide section of pavement we tilted the trike over and fixed another puncture. I deemed this a good moment to take a picture of the Scorpion's rear suspension.

Then it was on towards Dieren starting with a main road section. Then we had a gentle climb through woods (Damae was smiling so it can't have been that steep) on rough tarmac. A little further up we hit (if I remember correctly) a fast section on an unmetalled road just after a large gate where we paused to drink and take stock. This was our second chance to see how the trikes behaved at high speed. The first one had been earlier in the day but then on a road. On this off road section we raced downhill at the same sort of speeds as we would on our tourers whilst weaving side to side, trying to find more well packed surfaces. At one point I saw Damae's rear wheel step well out of line before the trike straightened. Later, she said she hadn't noticed anything unusual and to be honest I was more interested in keeping my trike on the straight and narrow than wondering what my rear wheel was doing.

Here I noticed another trike problem. When you have two wheels (er no I don't mean like a Segway) you can find the hardest line knowing that both wheels will be on it. In this case there were two clear car tyre tracks either of which would have been fine on our tourers. However on the trikes you could only have one of the three wheels on a smoother bit. We were jiggled and jarred more than on our normal bikes or indeed on a Brompton which, although equipped with smaller wheels than the trikes, could have at least have kept both wheels on the smooth.

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