Home briefly

Thursday. A straightforward day: ride to Hook of Holland, catch the afternoon ferry to Harwich, ride back to London.

Fred, a friend of mine since we met in Haarlem in 1985, met me for a quick, early lunch in the shadow of the Cathedral at 's-Hertogenbosch - it was nice to see him after a gap of a few years - then I rode for another hour and fifteen minutes to get to Hook. Traffic was heavy but fluid, and there were plenty of spaghetti junctions in which the satnav was useful. There's not much of beauty in the Rotterdam area.

Only one kiosk was open for check in, resulting in a long queue which spilled out of the port area onto the local roads, but I got through it in the end and we were put onto the ferry in the same order as check-in, parking in a long line of cars on the main deck. I had a cabin to relax in, and the TV shows the view from the bridge. It was almost dark by the time we disembarked in Harwich and the ride back into London was in busy traffic all the way - it was something of a surprise that there were so many people on the road heading towards London on the eve of a bank holiday weekend - isn't the rush meant to be in the opposite direction?

I was home before 10.30pm. 2,800 miles over 10 days. It seems I managed to fit quite a lot into the short time, not just in terms of distance travelled, but also the things I managed to see en route. I hadn't set out with an organ crawl in mind, but it seemed to turn into that, as well as giving me a taste of some new countries (Denmark, Sweden and Norway) and some new parts of countries I'd see before: Holland, and the North and East of Germany.

It was always going to be difficult to follow last summer, especially as I didn't have any cohesive plan this year, but it turned into a really good break: Cycling - Olympics - Moto, and gave me lots of inspiration for organ playing over the coming year. I've also got some ideas for future expeditions on the moto - watch this space.

Now it's back to the organ with concerts in Verona and Den Haag (I go to the former by plane and the latter by train) and then term starts up in September.

Right now as I finish typing I'm just leaving my Verona hotel lobby to play the concert which begins in an hour's time, so ciao for now...