No hills/no gravel - Day 3

Route: Wolfheze - Schoonhoven - Leiden 
Distance: 135 km
Elevation: 215 m
Duration: 6:18 h
Weather: sunny and slowly getting warmer, 9 C

After two days in the “hilly” region around Utrecht and Arnhem today I cycled all the way back home. I had taken the day off, as I need to use up my PTO days before relocating to Japan (likely early May) and weather forecast was fine. Sunny and even a slight tail wind. 

This was the only hill I saw (and didn’t climb) for the entire day:

Apart from that it was a quite ride through the vast river delta of the Netherlands  seeing some old town, but mostly on the distance:

I had a few stops along the way and 2 (!) soups to combat hunger and a bit of cold. But, yeah, pretty ride, but also pretty uneventful.

Hilly & Gravely - Day 2

Route: Ede - Hoenderloo - Wolfheze
Distance: 84 km
Elevation: 485 m
Duration: 4:29 h
Weather: very sunny but cold, 8 C

Today started very close to the center of the Netherlands!

And from there the day took a turn for the better. Cycling through forests and heathers (although without flowers… who knows when those things are flowering?)

On this log in the sun I had my second breakfast … 

… and shortly after I even found this dixi in the middle of the nature…

… not too far actually from my lunch (pannekoeken). Because in this area of the Hoge Velowe there aren’t a lot of villages nor a lot of places to eat. So Hoenderloo was the obvious place where to have lunch. And  actually I arrived there just before 13:00, so also good timing. I even had time to dial in for a few minutes to a zoom call, that my Tokyo cycling friends has organized and saw a few of them. Hoping to see them in person in the next months! 

After lunch the hills waited, but actually it wasn’t as strenuous s as I had feared. Somehow yesterday seemed harder. Although today I actually made a bit more elevation. Not hugely more though. 

I actually don’t have any photo of a hill, so you need to take the Strava data as proof. Instead I have pictures of flat landscapes:

Partially the ride came through an area where I had organized a 2 day ride last year summer. 

Today I passed the same old radio station a bit farther in the distance:

In summer there were also everywhere these beautiful but deadly flowers. Today no risk to be killed by a flower. 

Hilly & Gravely - Day 1

Route: Utrecht - Austerlitz - Rehnen- Ede
Distance: 83 km
Elevation: 397 m
Duration: 4:39 h
Weather: sun and clouds, 8 C

After a long time of only riding around Leiden (albeit quite big loops), I saw that this weekend weather was going to be really nice (well, for being February always) I decided to do a 3 day trip a bit farther away and in a landscape different from the normal polders around Leiden/Amsterdam.

I knew that behind Utrecht there is the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, a hilly area, but I actually never had been there. So goal for today! 

I didn’t start though in Leiden, but got the train to Utrecht, otherwise it would have been too far to enjoy the hilly part.

The first stop was a pyramid! In Austerlitz! 

But as you can see, it isn’t a “real” pyramid, nor OS this THE Austerlitz, which Google just told me is somewhere in the Austrian K&K empire. 

But well, the village closeby was actually named after the original Austerlitz, when it was founded by the French, so yes, there is some connection. 

Until here my way was in the forest, but mainly along normal roads, but quite soon after I entered into the Heuvelrug proper and had a very nice, winding way with very light gravel.

And yes, there was a bit of up and down. Nothing too steep, this is still the Netherlands, but not as flat as around Leiden. 

For being February there were a good number of other cyclists around. So I can understand the warning in Komoot that in summer this park can be too busy with too many cyclists at different speed to be enjoyable to the faster ones. But today that was no problem.

Actually I had put the ride into Meetup in case someone wanted to come along, but somehow a 80 km +, 400 m day in February didn’t sound attractive to other people on Meetup. Who knows why?

I for my part can’t complain, but it is also true that I feel my legs way more than after a 80 km flat ride. Probably the added weight of the overnight bag doesn’t help either.

For the night I am staying in a hotel run by the Salvation Army, which however feels (and looks) like any normal hotel, with the exception that they ban alcohol and cigarettes. 

Dinner was quite nice, definitely better than in many other Dutch places.

TdE - Day 46 Hoogstraaten - Leiden

Route: Hoogstraaten - Breda - Dordrecht - Rotte - Leiden
Distance: 123 km
Elevation: 215 m
Duration: 5:57 h
Weather: Sun and clouds, tailwind, getting a bit colder, 17 C

Overall Route: Leiden - Vennbahn - Trier - Mosel til Koblenz - Rhine til Mainz - Main - Tauber - Altmuehl - Donau - Black Forrest - Alsace - Canal Rhine - Rhone - Saar - Luxembourg - Ardennes - Flanders cycling classics - UCI World Championship - Leiden
Distance: 3,091 km
Elevation: 15,749 m
Duration: 46 days, including a rest week at my parents
Weather: Phenomenal! Mainly sunny, a few days with some clouds. More days that is was actually slightly too hot for me to ride than days that it rained (I  think proper rain only on 2 days, and a bit of drizzle maybe on another 2). 

In total over these past 6,5 weeks, I have ridden a bit over 3,000 km (3,091 km to be precise) and racked up a total elevation of over 15,000 m (15,749 m to be precise again). 

I haven't made the calculations, but that is probably more elevation than in the entire rest of the year. Poor flat Netherlands... (picture from quite close to home... just to illustrate the flaty flatness of the NETHERlands):

On my last day of this tour around Europe I put in another long day, with over 120 km... but I was massively helped by a nice and steady tailwind. Plus the weather got better again, no rain, just some decorative clouds. However clearly autumn is coming... the temperatures are dropping. The first day that I did not ride in my T-shirt but instead in the Castelli ROS jacket... albeit mostly with the arms zipped out. 

Probably the nicest part of today's ride was at the beginning, still in Belgium (!) where I had a nice winding river with a bicycle path alongside ...

.... that also continued beyond the border. 

Further on I followed simply what Komoot had planned as a direct route, which, as we are now in the Netherlands was all on either very good, or at least good cycling paths, although mostly along highways, so not really nice areas of the country. But the purpose of the straight line from Tienen to Leiden wasn't to see specially nice parts, but to get back to Leiden by Tuesday evening, in just 2 days for over 200 km. 

And this goal was achieved and something even waited for me back home:

Oh yeah... the first washing machine in over a month!

TdE - Day 45 Tienen - Hoogstraaten

Route: Tienen - Aarschot - Herentals - Hoogstraaten 
Distance: 83 km
Elevation: 279 m
Duration: 4:29 h
Weather: initially cloudy, then rainy, colder than in the past days, but sandals were still okay while riding, 16 C

Now back on the way to home in the Netherlands. When I first set out for this trip through Europe, I hadn't really planned the Belgian part. I knew that with EuroVelo 5  I would be able to come until Brussels (where I actually didn't go at all) and was confident that from there I should be able to find a good route back to the Netherlands. Finally due to the World Championships and thanks to the amazing weather during this entire trip, today would become only the second day to really get wet, I did arrive earlier in Belgium and stayed longer. But now it is time to head back home, to my new job starting on Friday this week. 

When I planned this return, I saw the option to use the Stedenroute, which is a tour connecting Brussels to Amsterdam passing through Antwerp, Dordrecht, Rotterdam and Alphen aan den Rijn, but from Tienen it would have been too far to cover in 2 days, and I wanted to be back in Leiden by Tuesday evening to have 2 days prior to my new job. So instead I opted for a pretty straight line from Tienen to Leiden, which happened to pass through Herentals, Breda and Dordrecht. Today on the first day, I would still stay in Belgium and stop shortly before the border in a small town called Hoogstraaten, in a surprisingly good, modern hotel. So modern that the hotel staff needs to explain how to switch on the lights in the room. 

Unfortunately during the second part of the ride, from Herentals onwards, it did rain. So once I arrive to my posh hotel I was pretty much covered in mud... but luckily Flemish people are all cycling fans and probably also cyclo cross fans, so they were not phased out by my appearance at check in. And in the room I tried to keep my mud to one sector of the room only. 

The first part of the ride to Aarschot was on quite nice country lanes ... 

... then came a section on one of those Belgian train tracks ...

... but there were also other cycling paths, like this one, specially paved with cobbles only in the cycling lane!!!

... which wasn't the worst part though... but even the parts later on between Herentals and Hoogstraaten on a main road were done reasonably well. Not totally save, but the felt safer than some other microscopic, bumpy cycling paths I had used in Belgium elsewhere. 

Belgium will remain in my mind as this strange cycling crazy nation, that doesn't know how to build cycling paths. Mystery! 

TdE - Day 44 World Championship in Leuven

Route: Tienen - Leuven - Tienen
Distance: 
     Susanne: 0 km
     Julian Alaphilippe: 276 km
Train: 40 km
Duration: 5:56:34 h (Julian Alaphilippe) 
Weather: sun and clouds, a bit colder but no rain

Today was I think the first rest day for me in 44 days of cycling through Europe, but only because I had other people cycle for me. Including the eventual two times world champion Julian Alaphilippe: 

But not only him, the local hero WVA (Wout van Aert) also came by a total of 8 times…

As well as MvdP (Mathieu van der Poel) his “nemesis” from the Netherlands and not loved by the crowd along the street:

I found out about a good week ago, that the World Championships would be at Leuven, right at the time when I would be in Belgium. So instead of using a more direct route from the Ardennes back to the Netherlands (and probably just arriving back home a few days earlier), I did hang around in Belgium in the last days slowly and indirectly approaching the Leuven area. 

After seeing yesterday the women's World Championship from the side of the road in the Flandrien loop, i.e. outside in the countryside on a cobbled climb, for the men's event, I decided to head to Leuven city center, where they had a loop that they would pass a total of 8 (!) times as part of a much longer race, which started in Antwerp, heading to Leuven and the first city loop, then out into the countryside around Overijse for 2 loops, than back to the city for 4 loops, back again to Overijse for a bit more hills and cobbles out there before coming back for 3 more loops and the finish line in Leuven. 

I had targeted the Saint Antoniusberg for viewing the race, but it turned out that no spectators where allowed on that rather narrow climb, so I took a spot in the street on the top of the Saint Antoniusberg, just about 1,6 km from the eventual finish line. 

I went to Leuven by train, which was definitely a good idea. A bicycle in the city would just have been a hindrance, although there were more than enough people around with a bike. The city was full with spectators lining the streets, but surprisingly the trains weren't that incredibly crowded. I even got a seat both on the way in and out of Leuven. 

One of the riders, Tom Pidcock, after the race said that it felt more like racing in a stadium (because of the cheering crowds) rather than racing on the open streets. And yes, people were chanting a lot along the road where I was. Mainly "Woutje Van Aert", some also "Forza Remco" and others were more supportive of Yves Lampaert, but the main roar was for WVA. While when Mathieu van der Poel passed the crowd generally was booing. Strangely enough they didn't show the same animosity towards other riders of other nations, so apparently for the Flemish fans it was a Netherlands against Flandern race. I say "Flandern" not "Belgium", because I think there was not a single rider in the Belgium squad who was from Wallonia. 

The peloton got smaller and smaller with each round, clearly a lot of the riders were drawing out of the race once their part of the job was done. A few rolled through very relaxed, greeting the crowd and enjoying the atmosphere... others looked utterly done in.

Julian Alaphilippe attacked right on the Saint Antoniusberg in the last but one lap and got a distance quite quickly. Already by the time he was were I was standing, maybe 200 m after the end of that berg, he was clear from the reduced bunch (of I think 17 riders, containing all the favorites), and they didn't manage to catch him in the remaining lap. The people along the street were not happy with that. Right opposite to where I was standing was a bar with a small TV set screening the World Championships, which was great, specially for this final loop. And as we watched Julian Alaphilippe staying away from the bunch, the mood got more gloomy and the "Woutje van Aert" chorus died. When Julian Alaphilippe, still the sole leader came by a last time just a bit over 1 km from the finish line half of the crowd was actually booing... while the other half (me included) was animating and applauding him. He got there first anyway. 

There were however also non Belgians along the road:

BTW, this is how the ride into the city looked like when I first came to Leuven walking from the station into town:

Real cycling fans might not be surprised, but I was. Instead of using team bicycles, e.g. a bicycle of the Belgian national team all cyclists were using their "own" bicycles from their normal teams, as one can observe on these pictures of team mates from Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium respectively. 

They even had different sponsors for their bib shorts, e.g. Quebeka and Bahrain Victorius the two Italian riders above. While the shirt seemed to be the national shirt. 

In retrospective, probably a logical thing, as you are used to THAT bicycle, and not just any bicycle, but must be a logistical nightmare for the mechanics to have that many different bike brands and components to care for.

As I didn't ride a single meter today... here the Strava from someone who did ride:

TdE - Day 43 Elewijt - Tienen

Route: Elewijt - Huldenberg (World Championship) - Tienen
Distance: 61 km
Elevation: 521 m
Duration: 4:00 h
Weather: very sunny, 20 C (but felt hotter in the sun)

Somewhere midway through my cycling trip through Europe I learned that this weekend there would be the World Championship of road racing in Belgium!

Marianne Vos, would ultimately be just second and be really disappointed 

… And I was most likely going to be in Belgium at the time. I no longer got a as room at Leuven, but Tienen isn’t far away and has a direct train line to Leuven, which I plan to take tomorrow (to watch the men’s race in town), but today I went out to what is called the “Flandrien circuit” a bit to the South of Leuven in a hilly part around Overijse (a name I first heard about half a year ago when watching my first cyclocross races - from the comfort of my sofa). 

Today I planned my day MUCH better than yesterday, and arrived with ample time in the area of the circuit. Actually I thought that I arrived with even more time to spare than I actually did. I hadn’t realized that they close the course more than 2 hours before the riders would come through. 

Initially I had planned to view the race from the Smyesberg, the only hill the women would do twice…

…but when I came there, there were no spectators yet lined up, so I just went up (pushing the bike) and over it, following the official route. But already at the next climb, the Moskesstraat, the route got closed off. But this was actually great timing, because  this was such a Flandrien climb: short, sharp, cobbled and narrow (and crucially for me: in the shade), so I decided to stay there. 

When I decided to stop, I was virtually the first spectator on that hill. And that was totally fine with me. I had enough water on the bike (for which I found a good enough space along the climb) and I had bought a sandwich shortly after my hotel, and I even found a reasonably comfortable twig on which to sit… so I relaxed at the wayside, observing the preparations until a few more spectators arrived:

And the second mechanic of the Swiss team with two replacement wheels, but no Allen key, which he borrowed from a spectator.

Then at some point also the official photojournalist arrived and searched for the ideal place where to stain themselves. And after even more time, finally the peloton: 

The peloton did not pass without difficulties this climb. Demi Vollering had gearing issues and needed to push up her bike! 

What was interesting on this second hill of the Flandrien course, the time difference between the first and last rider was probably something like 3 minutes. Compare that to the time difference at the end of the Flandrien circuit. 

When all had passed I slowly took my bike, pushed it up the rest of the hill and then set course towards Tienen, but after not that much I crossed again the course and the professional cyclists hadn’t arrived yet! So I waited with some other spectators there. This was after all the Flandrien hills and from there they would head back through relatively flat terrain to Leuven for the final hills. What was surprising that by then big distances between the different groups on the road had opened. By then the peloton was split in several groups (echelons, only that it wasn’t really windy) plus a good number of solo riders struggling to find a group with whom to ride. I think the time difference at this point was more like 15 minutes between first and last rider. Waiting for them to pass I also was again very happy about my prior decision to have the main view on the shady cobbled climb. In the plain sun it was really hot! 

Once all of the riders had passed, we, the spectators got on our bikes and rode on. 

The second part of my ride was much like a Paris - Roubaix with a lot of cobbles and even some gravel roads, but that seems to be the price to pay in Belgium for cycling on roads with little car traffic. 

When writing this post I was really surprised about the elevation, over 500 m! Really? Yes, there were the two climbs of the world championship (that I pushed my bicycle up), and the terrain was a bit rolling… but 500 m ??? Either it is wrong, or it says a lot about just how flat the Netherlands are. Not sure I will enjoy riding in that flat terrain again just as much as I did before setting out for this 5+ week trip through Europe. 

TdE - Day 42 Gent - Elewijt

Route: Gent - Schelde - Dendermonde - Mechelen - Elewijt 
Distance: 88 km
Elevation: 136 m
Duration: 4:43 h
Weather: Sun and clouds, and a bit windy, 20 C 

Frankly speaking, today was a rather unremarkable day, probably also because I missed the planned highlight of the day, as I started WAY too late. Bad planning…

So the planned highlight was to try to see the U23 men road race world championships somewhere between Antwerpen and Leuven, probably around Bonheiden or Keerbergen, which are both after Mechelen… only that Mechelen was at nearly 80 km from Gent, and I didn’t stay in Gent before 10ish… which was definitely too late for me to make it all the way. 

Apart from this, the Ride was quite similar to riding in the Netherlands: rivers, canals, dikes and wind. 

Only in Dendermonde I took a probably wrong decision to already cross the Schelde in order to avoid a ferry crossing where or seemed that the ferry would travel only once an hour… But the Schelde on the Dendermonde side doesn’t really have a cycling way. So for some time I was stuck in heavy traffic (on a cycling path which was just about acceptable but not nice not good). 

Only later I made it on a cycling path along a train line which was only for cyclists… but it had to cross the train line a bit too frequently, so that one couldn’t really just ride on. 

Today I also found the second bucket of utilitarian cyclists in Belgium: in Mechelen! I only crossed the city on a canal, but wow was there bicycle traffic! I mean, just normal amount from a Dutch perspective, but not sure I crossed any other city on my trip with that many cyclists around and about.

The night today I am spending in a congress hotel, somewhere not too far from Mechelen, the highway and the airport. 

When I checked in, the receptionist informed me that there is also a fitness area… but I think that 88 km of cycling is sufficient fitness for a day… so instead I switched on the television and watched the last 30ish kilometer of the bike race, while washing my kit (with the hotel’s rubber duck).