Holland - the full story

I finished work at 10.00pm on Friday night but when I got home one of my corporate website clients had sent me a load of work to do so I downloaded that all onto my Psion and got to bed by 11.30pm.

My alarm went off at 4.00am (*only* 8 hours before Kasim says he got up!!) and I left by 5.00am. I caught the 7.05am sailing from Dover to Calais which actually left 10 minutes early. I bought some Euros on board and the exchange rate has improved as last week it was 1.41 and this week it's 1.43.

We docked at about 8.30am = 9.30am Europe time and I drove through France and Belgium to Holland. I stopped once in Belgium for a 10 minute catnap and actually managed NOT to get lost in the ring-road around Antwerp! I was a bit disappointed that I only saw two proper old fashioned windmills in Holland (plus loads of the wind power ones).

The MapQuest directions were very good and put me right outside the venue. I say "venue" but it was a series of fields in the middle of the Dutch countryside! As I got there later than a lot of people I was in the car park where the grass was literally knee-deep....I tried not to think about grass snakes!

I then sat in my car working while listening to the bands playing in the next field! It was like listening to a very loud album!

At about 8.00pm I went into the festival (only in Holland would a rock festival have a parking area for bicycles!) and saw (from a very long distance!) Crosby, Still and Nash. Of course it started to rain (hard!) during their set but most people were already wet so stayed there. The festival was very well organised as each act went on stage at exactly the hour and played for an hour.

Seeing concerts on a tour is so much easier in 2005 than it was in 1996! I can book tickets on the Internet and find friends in a 20,000 crowd via mobile text messages! It was a case of "where are you?", "I'm by the table at the back on the left", "So am I now but I can't see you!" before we met up!

As soon as C,S&N finished their set, we moved up towards the front of the stage as most people moved to see Dream Theater on the other stage and we ended up about 5 rows back on Kasim's side (honestly that was the side with less people!).

As I said in my review at http://www.KasimInfo.com/2005ML.html it was a good gig, a bit short but Meat Loaf's voice was probably better than it was during the whole of the CHSIB tour IMHO!

The problem with holding this concert out in the middle of nowhere is that there was one single-track road to and from it! Consequently we stayed and chatted for about an hour to let the crowds get out of the fields! We (I saw the concert with two Germans and one Dutch guy) also met up with some more German and Dutch fans that we knew so it was very social! Apparently the Dutch people kiss three times on the cheeks when they leave so saying goodbye took quite a while!

It wasn't much fun walking through the fields back to my car (in the knee-high grass) especially as I had to climb over one fence and climb under some wire at one point!

I left the field at 12.30am and just drove straight out which was great. MapQuest again did me proud but it seemed a lot further back to Calais than it did coming out! I stopped once for a 20 minute catnap but other than that managed to keep going (I had a good CD I was listening to!). Unfortunately I just missed one boat so I had to wait another hour for the next.

I docked in Dover at 7.15am (UK time) and drove home to get in at 8.30am (27.5 hours after I left home!). I uploaded the work I'd done, quickly updated KI.com and the looked at Kasim's photos of the gig! I fell into bed at 9.30am but could only sleep until 11.00am as I started work at noon.

Roll on Belfast on Friday....!

Mileage today: 698 miles
Tour total –2,520 miles