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Hello fellow velomobilists. (Writing in English as my brain is not working well enough for German).
We got back yesterday from a Velomobile tour to England (visiting my mother). We were due to return today, but events overtook us and we had to hire a van to bring us back from Rotterdam. This was because I came down with a bad cold whilst in England (which meant we couldn't do all the rides we wanted) and we felt it was not wise to then ride the 225km home from Hoek van Holland over two days.
This is the first time we have had to break off a ride, but the whole experience wasn't great.
Firstly, it was hard to decide in advance whether I would be able to ride on Saturday or Sunday. Most of my attention was taken on Friday by having to ride 50km to Harwich from my Mum's house in an evening with rain forecasted. I was very concerned I would get too chilled and make myself more ill. Fortunately in the end the rain had passed by the time we left Mum's (we waited longer there than my original plan). But I couldn't somehow look much past this when deciding what to do.
On Friday morning, when we were looking at this, I felt too ill to ride the next two days (with rain forecasted, and quite cold). I was sneezing and sniffing constantly and the cough was starting to go down to my chest.
So we made the decision to hire a van and drive ourselves home.
First problem - a small Dutch van hire company would not rent to us as we don't live in NL, so we had to go for the more expensive Sixt option. There were also no affordable 'one way' van rentals, so Klaus would have to drive the van back to Rotterdam. Also we still had to ride 40km on Saturday morning to get to the Sixt rental place in Rotterdam - and this in pretty chilly weather with rain forecasted. This ride turned out to be OK for me as I was feeling a bit better that day, and we avoided the rain, but Klaus was now not feeling so great.
The van turned out to be larger than expected (they had a puncture on the Sprinter we had ordered) so we had a tail lift, but this was a 7.5 tonne truck so a bit more challenging to drive and less fuel efficient.
We drove home, then Klaus had a rest for 2 hours and then drove the van back to Rotterdam, catching the train back to Venlo and I picked him up from there in the car. He was completely exhausted after this as he had not been feeling well all day.
I spent the whole day yesterday thinking if we could have done things differently. Should we have stayed in Hoek van Holland for a night to see if we would be better (that would not have been good as Klaus is much more ill today)?
Another option perhaps is to ask a hotel to store the velomobiles and get the train home, collecting them sometime using our car and a rented trailer. But where could we store them?
We had asked a couple of friends who have access to Sprinters/trailers but none were available, and you can't assume friends will be able to help at short notice.
What do the rest of you do when planning Velomobile travel? With my trike I could always get on a train, but now this is making me think a bit more about velomobile touring as if it happens again I might well end up stuck again.
We got back yesterday from a Velomobile tour to England (visiting my mother). We were due to return today, but events overtook us and we had to hire a van to bring us back from Rotterdam. This was because I came down with a bad cold whilst in England (which meant we couldn't do all the rides we wanted) and we felt it was not wise to then ride the 225km home from Hoek van Holland over two days.
This is the first time we have had to break off a ride, but the whole experience wasn't great.
Firstly, it was hard to decide in advance whether I would be able to ride on Saturday or Sunday. Most of my attention was taken on Friday by having to ride 50km to Harwich from my Mum's house in an evening with rain forecasted. I was very concerned I would get too chilled and make myself more ill. Fortunately in the end the rain had passed by the time we left Mum's (we waited longer there than my original plan). But I couldn't somehow look much past this when deciding what to do.
On Friday morning, when we were looking at this, I felt too ill to ride the next two days (with rain forecasted, and quite cold). I was sneezing and sniffing constantly and the cough was starting to go down to my chest.
So we made the decision to hire a van and drive ourselves home.
First problem - a small Dutch van hire company would not rent to us as we don't live in NL, so we had to go for the more expensive Sixt option. There were also no affordable 'one way' van rentals, so Klaus would have to drive the van back to Rotterdam. Also we still had to ride 40km on Saturday morning to get to the Sixt rental place in Rotterdam - and this in pretty chilly weather with rain forecasted. This ride turned out to be OK for me as I was feeling a bit better that day, and we avoided the rain, but Klaus was now not feeling so great.
The van turned out to be larger than expected (they had a puncture on the Sprinter we had ordered) so we had a tail lift, but this was a 7.5 tonne truck so a bit more challenging to drive and less fuel efficient.
We drove home, then Klaus had a rest for 2 hours and then drove the van back to Rotterdam, catching the train back to Venlo and I picked him up from there in the car. He was completely exhausted after this as he had not been feeling well all day.
I spent the whole day yesterday thinking if we could have done things differently. Should we have stayed in Hoek van Holland for a night to see if we would be better (that would not have been good as Klaus is much more ill today)?
Another option perhaps is to ask a hotel to store the velomobiles and get the train home, collecting them sometime using our car and a rented trailer. But where could we store them?
We had asked a couple of friends who have access to Sprinters/trailers but none were available, and you can't assume friends will be able to help at short notice.
What do the rest of you do when planning Velomobile travel? With my trike I could always get on a train, but now this is making me think a bit more about velomobile touring as if it happens again I might well end up stuck again.