So, the plan was to do a (very) long ride from Puttgarden in the North East of Germany, to Hook of Holland in one day. This is 416 miles and Google (which factors in traffic conditions unlike my sat nav) said this would take 6h47, add some extra time for rest/fuel stops.
I knew the traffic would be bad around Hamburg, but this required miles of filtering (riding between lanes two and three) in slow/stationary traffic in the slowly increasing heat.
What I hadn't bargained for was the Netherlands issuing a heat wave warning, and activating their national heat plan. With temperatures ever increasing to 32C and higher, being on top of a very hot motorcycle in protective riding gear in slow moving traffic was not the best plan. Couple this with massive traffic jams and this was incredibly tiring. I'd have split the journey if I'd known this combination was going to occur.
Even with drinking lots of water, and putting on sun cream often, I think I was starting to suffer with heat exhaustion. I took a fairly long rest before completing the final hour of what was an 11 hour day. At least when I arrived at the Hook of Holland I managed to board the ferry almost immediately, followed closely by a welcome shower to cool down.
Earlier in the day at a fuel stop in the Netherlands I'd checked my phone to see the traffic delays but didn't have any phone service, I didn't really think anything of this at the time. Only when I boarded the ferry and checked my phone did I then see three Netherlands' national emergency phone messages (the mobile network can push messages if required), warning that the emergency phone network (112, their version of 999) was down, and quoting different numbers to call. On reading about the outage it turned out the first time they pushed the emergency message they incorrectly put the national newspaper news tip hotline number, then they had another go with the right number, oops. Needless to say this was all a bit embarrassing for them on a day that had already been declared as high risk. The CEO of the Dutch telecom company KPN has subsequently resigned (claiming family reasons).
Arriving in Harwich at 7:30 I then of course hit the rush hour traffic on the A12 and M25, more filtering, but in the rain this time.