Day 2 dawned grey and rainy and the forecast for the day was intermittent rain pretty much all day.
Before we left Goes, we met with the manager of Fortuna Travel who would be transporting our cases from Hotel to Hotel. In addition to some useful information about Zeeland in general, he warned us that we would be meeting with very strong winds as we rode across the dike to the island/peninsula of Tholen.
This time we were well prepared with our rain jackets, waterproof pants and shoe covers.
We noticed that many of the fields were waterlogged and checking the altimeter on the Garmin, we realized that we were at -2 meters (2 meters BELOW sea level). We kept an eye on this throughout the day and were astounded to see that we were often as low as -5 meters. It was novel experience as we cycled along our bike paths to see boats sailing along canals ABOVE us !

The winds on the coast were another new experience for us. It took some getting used to when we had to pedal hard to keep moving DOWNHILL !  As predicted, the winds on the dike were extremely strong and we were pretty tired by the time we reached the mainland of Tholen and the winds dropped again. The wind surfers that we saw as we crossed the dike were having a great time!

The rain gear did a great job and in spite of the wind and rain, we arrived at our hotel in the town of Tholen completely dry. We went exploring through the town and the harbour which we learnt was the only sweetwater harbour (without tides) on the island. We found another windmill and numerous old churches before returning to the Hotel for dinner. The restaurant was filled with bric-a-brac and Dutch items, old and new and made an interesting backdrop for the evening meal.