A motorcycle trip with a difference, this one.
Our friends of the MSG (the Enschede university motorcycle club) arrived yesterday late in the afternoon, after a three-hour ride on the various wide and narrow roads our countryside has to offer. It had been a splendid afternoon, quite warm in fact, and it was still very nice weather.
Stoneshop ordered Surinam takeaway for everyone, and we sat down to eat. There were about twelve of us.
After food and coffee we saddled out iron horses and headed for the East, while there was still daylight left. Stoneshop led us by some nice bendy dike roads (the nicest roads we have in this flat country) into Germany, and then on to the city of Duisburg. It was almost dark when we arrived at the Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, a former steel plant that has been transformed into a tourist attraction.

One of the MSG members had booked us a tour so we could see the steel melting oven, 65 metres high, last used in 1985. Our guide was a former employee, so he knew exactly what he was talking about! He first showed us a film so we understood the basic principles of steel production. Then he took us all up the steel steps to the very top of the oven, by that time it was completely dark. The plant itself was lit in various colours, making it look like something in a science-fiction movie.