heatwave

In the Netherlands we are on the brink of a heatwave. A few days with temperatures of 30+ Celsius are very rare for this country. The last wave was in 2006 (maybe I blogged about it) and there were to much people who died of dehydration and complications due to the heat. Luckily today was a day witrh a low humidity. The heath was much more bearable.

For my garden this is a test. I planted a few sunflowers and I don't know if they can face the sun much longer.

This part of the garden is 2 metres wide and 4 metres wide.

It's my record and it made my weekend

Almost forgot to write about the first weekend with temperatures like in summer.
After last episode in this blog I wrote about temperatures of 17 degrees. Not much later, on April 14 and 15 we registered even 27 and 28.9 degrees Celsius. My parents, grandparents and their ancestors never experienced so early such midsummer highs. The keukenhof, with the famous tulips, is booming business.
Actually I went there together with my club on bicycle. It was the bloembollentocht, formerly known as the LSD-trip.

We departed from the locally famous cafe Ledig Erf at 8.00 am sharp and rode in western direction. After 90 kilometer we reached our goal Bloemendaal-Overveen, known in Dutch as het kopje van Bloemendaal. After climbing these dunes (I think our Sunday afternoon hill de Amerongse berg is much heavier) we headed to the North sea, Zandvoort was the place to be on this hot Sunday.

It felt like being in France, the colors, the perfume and the chaos. Yeah, it was like a day in my first holiday in France, in Perpignan.

Back home I cycled 200 kilometer in Dutch heat. It's a record for me.
On the day the Rotterdam marathon was cancelled after 3 hours due to the heat I cycled in a pack of 40 cyclists 7.5 hours. That's my record and it made my weekend.