Last weekend I was at the campsite in the Eastern part of the Netherlands. As some of you know we have a mobile home on a campsite there.
Since I have a 200 kilometer ride planned in June I really have to make some cycling kilometers.
At first I wanted to cycle to the campsite, but since I would have a headwind the complete time I decided to bring my bike and cycle back home.
This ended up in a 137 kilometer ride from the east part of the Netherlands to the coast.
Sunday it was quite nice and sunny day and the wind came from the north-east which was perfect for this ride.
In the morning I prepared my bicycle, applied some sunscreen, filled my bottles, grabbed some energy bars, and took off.
It was going to be a long and lonely ride. I actually don't really mind riding alone. I have my headset and Spotify, but 5 hours that was the duration I aimed for) is quite a long time.
Just a few kilometers after I started I already had to stop for a while. The regional tourist train was passing by. I like these old trains, but it did get me out of my rithm.
The campsite is on the east side of de Veluwe; a forest-rich ridge of hills 1100 km2 in the province of Gelderland in the Netherlands.
The first part I could cycle in the shade of the trees. The more I would get to the west, the less shade I would have.
After leaving de Veluwe behind I cycled through an area with a lot of farmland. The meadows are mostly filled with cows. The Netherland is one of the largest exporters of dairy products and meat of the world. And that for being such a small country. Especially Dutch cheese is famous all over the world.
Although the packaging of the milk, cheese and meat show pictures of the cows like in the ones in the picture, the truth is most of them are kept in large sheds and never see daylight. Quite sad actually. And one of the reasons why I hardly eat meat.
Another shot I made during the ride. As you can see I didn't have a lot of shade. I had two 750 ml bottles with me which were empty after four hours. On several locations in the Netherlands water taps are placed. There are several thousands of these taps in the entire country where you can get water for free. But when I finally found one on the route (there is an app where you can look them up), the tap was broken.
As I didn't want to make many more kilometers I decided to grab something to drink in a terrace along the route.
When you go from the east part of the Netherlands to the west it gets more and more urban. With big cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague being in the west there is a high density of people per km2. Way more than in the east, north and south.
Near another large city in the middle of the Netherlands; Utrecht there are some small places where there are still some beautiful areas like the forests near Soest. There was a really narrow but beautiful cycling path throught the woods there.
When you get closer to the west there is also more water. There are some areas with big lakes and also a lot of canals.
I even had to take a small ferry to cross one of the canals. The closest bridge was a couple of kilometers away, so it wasn't a question whether I would take the ferry or not.
Cycling in the Netherland
This weekend I had a reply on one of my posts from @consciouscat about cycling in the Netherlands. She mentioned that the Netherland is flat and thus a perfect country for cyclist. But as I already replied to her; there is way more than that.
The Netherlands has history with cycling. There are more bicycles than people.
All infrastructure takes cyclists into account.
There are many cycling paths dedicated to cyclists. As you can see in the photo below the cars have their own road. This is perfect for the safety of the cyclists.
As you can see there are some cyclist on the other side of the road as well.
Apart from physically separated cycling paths there are also cycling paths marked on a lot of main roads in cities and towns.
Most of the times they are even coloured red like the ones in the photo below.
As you an see the car keeps a nice distance when passing me on my bike.
And these are just two examples. We also have cycling highways and parking garages for bicycles. The city of Utrecht even has the largest in the world and has space for a whopping 12500 bicycles.
So, this was my 137 kilometer ride. I hope you enjoyed it.
FriendlyMoose
Creating blogs about photography, cycling, gardening, craft beer and more...
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This is a sport that is both fun and beneficial for health, you are great for going that far.
It sure is! Thanks!
The weather is looking really nice for you and your training looks to also be going well preparing for your 200km ride !LUV
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The weather was good indeed and it was a nice training!
Thanks for the support @ewkaw & @qurator
nice ride cross country , a bit to long for me
Thank you! It was a long trip indeed.
Damn sexy locomotive! Spotfy is life saver, isn't it? I actually started listening to music while riding just a couple weeks ago and wow... time flies and it gives an enormous boost.
Spotify is great. Especially for lonely rides 😀