Alkmaar

After watching the olympic closing ceremony I had a short sleep and then headed out of London at 5am. I took a chance and went straight along the embankment, through the Limehouse Link and onto the A12 which went right past the olympic village. There were no traffic problems and great views of the stadium which was still fully floodlit - presumably the clean-up job was in full flow just hours after the end of the festivities.

Essex is hillier than I remember (I'm on the moto again, btw, so this wasn't a problem) and eventually the dual carriageway peters out into a single lane towards Harwich and a procession of lorries coming the other way, presumably just off the ferry from Holland which I was aiming to catch. The check-in facilities are rather 1970s and not as efficient as Brittany Ferries, but the ship, Stena Britannica, is new and huge - the longest ferry on any service connecting with the UK.

After  breakfast I had a sleep in a comfortable cabin with TV - olympic post-mortems were in full flow, with one man complaining that every country's press was positive except the French who were moaning that the British athletes had cheated. Sounds like sour grapes to me as we got quite a lot more medals than they!

We arrived in a steamy Hook of Holland at 3.45 local and after a slow disembarkation process I headed north towards Alkmaar. I had hoped to see the organ in the St Laurens Church (my first LP, of Bach  played by Fernando Germani) but I had to be content with a view of the outside of the church, which is now (like many Dutch churches) a museum.

It was beginning to get dark so I headed to a camping on the coast just south of the road that crosses the sea towards Groningen - sorry I don't know what it's called. From here I'll head into northern Germany and then possibly Scandinavia - weather depending.