It was another night of thunder and rain except this time when we woke up it was still pouring.Time to finally check out the wet weather gear that last surfaced fully on day 1 when we arrived in Holland..Breakfast at Family Bakkers B and B, Voorthuisen was served in a small outhouse in the back yard.Eddy escorted us each in turn with a large umbrella to the outhouse.This was his museum full of old collectables mainly household items. I did see my jelly mould and rabbit blancmange mould amongst the collection!Breakfast had been beautifully laid out including artistic ham and tomato creations.We were totally overwhelmed thinking a small bed and breakfast it would just be rolls and jam.Eddy then even produced fruit and plastic lunch bags so we could make our lunch.All togged up in our rain gear we set off, a few kms on we saw lights on in the toy museum.This had very good reviews so we thought lets go in out of the rain.It was being cleaned but we were given the offer of coming in for a coffee out of the rain.We kept going as it didn’t properly open for another hour.

Then came my moment of calamanity I cycled to the traffic lights to press the button and my large neoprene overboots were jammed in my toe straps I couldnt get my foot to the ground.It was such a spectacular fall that a car driver stopped ,jumped out of his car to help.Tim meanwhile was trying to pull my bike up till I made him realise my foot was jammed in my toe straps on the bike and my ankle was bent backwards.Tim managed to free my foot and fortunately my foot is used to being bent backwards with my attempts at yoga.My left hamstrings seemed a bit worse for wear but they had only hit my panniers, so couldn’t be too bad.I removed the offending neoprene overshoes, my cycling shoes are Merrells and a bit larger than the zamberlans I’d normally wear, so we can blame the incident on the supply chain problems me thinks.Feeling a bit shaken up we continued onto Amersfoot a very beautiful town with a great historic arch we entered through.Fortunately a coffee shop was at hand so a large cup of tea soon nearly restored me.Great churches aswell and quaint shops.

We had planned earlier to divert south from Amersfoot to go through the national park and as I was now feeling okish and the rain had stopped we went anyway.It turned out to be fairly slow going with some of the paths quite slippy but still very beautiful with tall stands of trees lining our path.The paths today were much emptier although we saw three sets of dutch older cyclists out for their rides and a few hardy walkers.Today we saw free range dutch pigs, quite cute black ones. Another part of the forest were a set of white mansions all fenced off,with no entry signs but no name on them. We came out of the forests into the outer tree lined suburbs of Utrecht.One young man cycling along asked where we were from and we said Australia, he kept saying thats amazing, we did point out we arrived by plane.

Our hotel, Mitland, is a few kms from the centre and fortunately for me it has a swimming pool and sauna.So instead of exploring the sights of Utrecht Ive been in the pool and sauna stretching out my days injuries.The hotel is set amongst canals and lakes so we have walked around there and hopefully tomorrow we can see the centre as we cycle out.This hotel is quite reasonable not being in the centre and comes with a balcony overlooking a canal on one side, so time to relax.

After a good breakfast we set off into Utrecht any thoughts of going via the city centre were quickly dispensed with.The cyclists here are manic coming at you in all directions, maybe we shouldnt have left in bike rush hour 830am.So our aim was to get out of Utrecht in one piece forget the sights.Worse than Amsterdam or London.Leaving Utrecht was lovely along canals , country lanes and yet more canals. We had headwinds, showers as the day progressed but it was so picturesque the weather was inconsequential. The first village we went through also a good coffee stop was Montfort magnificent turreted castle and a great looking old hotel.From there we went onto Oudewasser with leaning mediavel buildings and a town hall from 1500s.Lunch was overlooking a canal before heading into Gouda.We dropped our bikes and luggage off at 2pm and went on foot to see the sights of Gouda.Popped in on the monumental St Johns church and St Ignatius and then went onto the Gouda experience.After all you have to do the cheese thing when you’re here.We actually learnt how easy it is to make Gouda you just have to apply 8kgs of pressure for 30mins after youve done the curdling bit with the rennet, and starter easy.!10 litres of milk for 1 kg of cheese, thats a heap of milk.It ended up a lot of fun including checking out your hand milking technique, no problem I got 1/2 litre in no time at all.Then there was tasting the milk plus the cheese not to mention dress ups.The finale was a cheese tasting box seeing if you could now differentiate between the young,mature , old and herb versions of gouda.

Our b an b is one of the old dutch tall houses next to the canal and we thought we had done the steepest of steps in our b and b in Denmark, these have to be seen.My foot only half fits on a step I know Ive got big feet but…Easy walking distance into the city so great location.We did see a military parade in the main square unsure whether it was related to Gouda celebrating 750 years as a town, as it was pouring down for half of it they didnt get too many spectators.Tomorrow Delft how much pottery can I get in my panniers …quite a lot if Im wearing all my waterproofs.