Big Smoke (no, I didn't have one, I had the children with me...)

I am a Philistine and a country bumpkin.

Went to Amsterdam today, too many people, too busy. Much nicer further south IMO (I am rather fond of Noord-Brabant). I lived for 16 years in London and never liked it greatly. Several years out of cities have only confirmed my views.

Oh, and I'm a Philistine because we went to the Van Gogh museum and it was just some pictures. I liked a few very much, but that was it really. Oh well, we can't all be cultured ;-)

DS (age 5) commented on one of the paintings featured in the museum leaflet "Yes, Mum said that it was his famousest painting, but I don't think they look much like sunflowers". Like father like son then.

Cycling in the Netherlands

Cycled the 7.5km (5 miles or thereabouts for the terminally British) into Breda.

Along the main road there was mostly a cycle lane on each side of the road, separate from the road and footpath. It was wide, well surfaced and had right of way over minor roads and entrances to premises. It's illegal to cycle on road if there is an adjacent cycle path. Some people think this should be the same in the UK. I could go for that, but only when all our cycle tracks are up to Netherlands standards.

Breda has a population of over 150,000, yet we managed to cycle right into the heart of the town with young children without ever feeling unsafe on the bikes. Can we inject some of this into UK transport planning, please?

Offline for 10 days!

Worried about withdrawal symptoms. Anyway, have decided to "blog" on paper (I guess that makes it a journal really...) and type it up when I get home.

Drove across a bit of France, Belgium and the Netherlands today. Their motorways mostly put us to shame with two exceptions, the woefully inadequate signs and the corkscrew junctions followed by 6" long slip roads. Hair raising.

N.B. The dates of these posts will reflect the time of writing rather than posting online!

Tech Support

I provide tech support to various people both formally and informally, so when a friend emailed this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRBIVRwvUeE
I just had to post the link here.

Enjoy!