Cycling Cultures blog

I’ve been wanting to the North Sea Cycle route for a while and in August, I took a week to do the bit that skirts Holland and then took other cycle routes through Germany. Our plan was to head up to Copenhagen to visit friends for the weekend. Everything was going well until Lubeck when we discovered that we could not get our bikes on the train to Lolland. (We wanted to hop across to Denmark and continue the cycle but trains and time was against us). So, we ended up on a train direct to Copenhagen. A much longer trip would have been better as a week barely gets you into the rhythm of touring. Nevertheless it was great to experience the Netherlands and Germany by bike.

Time: 6 days
Distance: 680kms ++
Start: Hook of Holland (The Netherlands)
Night 1: Egmond aan Zee, Bergen
Night 2: Holwerd
Night 3: Bad Nieuweschans
Night 4: Berne (Germany)
Night 5: Jork
Night 6: Lubeck
Train to Copenhagen

We were not the only tourers to catch the Harwich to Hook of Holland ferry.

The North Sea Cycle route was well marked once you looked for these signs and worked out that LF1b was east and LF1a was west. (We did a lot more than the 680kms as we went off track quite a bit at first.)

It was interesting to see some of the cycle infrastructures, such as this secure parking and toilet station in Den Haag.

A system of interconnected cycle paths took us through sand dunes….

… along beaches…

… and through farms.

It was used by a wide variety of cyclists; families with small children, roadies, commuters and tourers. Helmet spotting became a game as they were pretty rare.

We did however spot an eclectic range of cycles.

And the route was dotted with local stalls offering home made produce.

Ah, the cycling appetite is a wonderful thing.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Cycle touring, Observations, The Netherlands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.