Proposals are important, detailed, complex documents that almost inevitably have to be prepared in too little time to meet a firm deadline set by the potential customer. Final printing and binding just in time to catch the post is a relative luxury. Delivery by courier, giving maybe another day or so to finish, is more common. And it is no rarity that completion is so delayed that the only option is for a fleet-footed member of the team to snatch the finished documents from the printer and dash off to the customer's offices personally. Thus it was that I volunteered to be one of two mules delivering a proposal to meet a deadline of 1300 CET on Monday 21st March. A colleague who is young enough to think that international business travel is a boon took one copy to our primary customer
in the South of France, while I tucked another copy in my top box on Sunday 20th and set off for the end customer, the European Space Agency at Noordwijk, near Leiden in the Netherlands.
I've been wanting to see what it's like taking a bike abroad via the channel tunnel, and this chore gave me the chance to try it out on expenses! It's all very smooth: three hours motorway to the tunnel, under the channel within an hour tops, and off on another four hours of motorway the other side. In fact, the only excitement in the journey was dodging pot holes on the Belgian section of the motorway, and navigating the six-lane hell of the Antwerp and Rotterdam ring roads. Noordwijk itself is a quaint little resort town which just about merited the couple of hours I could spend looking around before the ESA's post-room opened on the Monday morning. With more time, I'd have spent longer coming back and would have explored the roads that run across the sea dykes; North Sea on one side, and miles of lake on the other. That'll be for another trip, maybe; perhaps trying out the overnight ferry route from Harwich to Hoek van Holland to save on a hotel for one night.
Bikes go on last.
Motorways services are pretty much the same anywhere in Europe.
Noordwijk by night.
Less impressive by day.