Life after Covid

ON June 28 Ingeborg Sluiters and Simon de Boer left Schoorl in the Netherlands where they live for most of the year.
Twenty-nine days and 2,370 kilometres later they arrived at their La Nucia home, having cycled all that way.
“You must be expert cyclists,” the Euro Weekly News suggested when we spoke to Ingeborg and Simon last week.
Both laughed at the suggestion.  “No!” they exclaimed in unison.
Ingeborg (52) and Simon (60) visit Spain when they can.  Yes, even in the summer when the heat is at its fiercest and temperatures at their highest, they insisted.
Cycling is ideal for moving from A to B on the Costa Blanca, they realised, and back in Holland they decided to buy e-bikes for their next visit.
From there to making the 2,370-kilometre trek by bike was, they felt, a logical step. But there was much more to the decision than that.
Last December, both were ill with Covid and not long before that, Simon spent an earlier spell in hospital for surgery on his back.
They wanted to tell a positive story and send a message of hope during what has been – and still is – such a dark and difficult time for so many people.
With all the restrictions and obstacles to the lives that we took for granted before the pandemic, they wanted to show people that you can recover after an operation and you can return to normal after Covid.
During the tiring but exhilarating journey they were often asked if they were cycling in aid of a charity.
“Yes and no,” they would answer each time.  “We are the charity and we are doing this for ourselves but we are doing it for others, too.”