Ameland is at the end of the world.
Or at least it feels that way when you visit; the only way to get there is by boat – although there is a tiny little dirt airstrip on the island, and we did stop in long enough for Mike to get a tour of the tower and hang out with the controllers.
Dulcibella is named for the ship in the book Riddle of the Sands, written in 1903 by Erskine Childers – and made into a movie in 1979 by a British filmmaker. More on that in another post.
The North Sea is the outside border of the Frisian Islands and Ameland is one of those islands. When you arrive at the ferry dock on the island, you go to the bike rental shop, where they literally have thousands of bikes for rent. They don’t even ask for ID, just payment. Which makes sense when you realize that there’s no way to remove a bike from the island since you can’t take one of their bikes on the ferry.
It was windy – very windy – and we decided that our 20km ride around the island might have been better served by renting e-bikes, but the people powered bikes cost 10€ and the e-bikes cost 42€ per day to use, so for the 6 hours we were on the island, the numbers seemed clear. Good ice cream shop here.
