Adventurous and very sporty, that’s what you could call Ruby van der Jagt (35) and Sacha Bernard (30) from Breda. They make a trip home on rollerblades from Bilbao, Spain. And that is not always easy. “I already went all out for the first kilometer.”
They took the plane to Bilbao last week and will go all the way back on rollerblades. They will have already passed Paris on Wednesday evening, the two say in the radio program Afslag Zuid.
They skate about 60 kilometers a day. “One of the first days was terrible and then suddenly there was a super-large snake on the road that Ruby almost fell over. And a kilometer further we were chased by a pit bull.”
They have also missed a boat once when they had to cross a lake. “And for the first kilometer of our trip I thought I had priority, but I didn’t. I had to brake very hard and then I went all out,” laughs Ruby.
The occasional setback is part of life, but the duo also experiences plenty of beautiful things along the way. “It’s super fun. We’ve already seen four snakes and also deer on the road. And we recently talked about a beaver. Then we saw one a little later.”
A few of the girls’ relatives drive along in the car, which is especially useful in the mountains. “On some parts, those altitude meters are so dangerous. You can’t go down 16 percent on your rollerblades, so we put our hands on the car at the back. Then my mother or Sacha drives on the clutch, so that we can go down safely,” says Ruby.
At a few points it is so steep that the girls have to go by car, but most of the time they walk or rollerblade. “We really walked a lot of kilometers uphill. It’s really hiking combined with roller skating.”
It is not the first time that Ruby and Sacha have covered a considerable distance on inline skates. Two years ago they went from Breda to Berlin. She managed those 700 kilometers so well that they are now going for double that. They expect to be back home on May 5.
What they secretly hope to find is a way to properly map paved roads. “The routes are almost impossible to plan, not always with apps like Komoot and Strava. Sometimes the road seems like butter. So if you could map that out, the skating Netherlands would be very happy!”
