After riding 2 months through Japan in autumn of 2017, I am now back in Europe, working... but still riding on my brompton whenever possible. Currently this is mainly in the Netherlands, close to home. But hopefully other countries will join the list.

Monday 16 July 2018

Ride on the fortifications of Leiden

Bicycle: 14 km 
Riding time:  0:48 h
Total ascent: 12 m
Avg speed:  17.2 km/h
Max speed:  27.0 km/h 
Route: Fortifications of Leiden * 2
Weather: Sunny and very warm and a bit humid, 24 
C


I took the opportunity that my husband was studying Japanese to get out for a quick evening ride before dinner. Again I had not specific idea where to go, until a few hundred meters after leaving home, I discovered that I had forgotten all my water supplies, so I decided to stay as close as possible to home, but still to continue riding. Thus transforming this ride into a a zig-zag line around the moat of Leiden.

I took this picture at the point of return (I didn't do the ride twice in the same directly but once forward and once backward), just to see how the road from the other side looks like.


I think the anti-clockwise ride was slightly better, more straightforward.

Here a picture from a place actually quite close to home... but when I took it I still had more than half of the ride in front of me. In Leiden they always decorate the bridges very nicely with these pink and white flowers.


and a picture of the only surviving windmill in the centre of Leiden, DeValk, which is a huge windmill. Normally a windmill would only start at the level where there is the balcony on this one. But with windmills in the city, they needed to construct them higher and higher to harvest the wind which was otherwise blocked by the houses.



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