Meet-up Ride - Den Haag - Hoek van Holland - Maasvlakte - Brielle - Schiedam

Bicycle: 76 km 
Riding time: 4:38 h
Total ascent: 235 m
Avg speed:  16.4 km/h
Max speed:  33.8 km/h

Route: Den Haag - Hoek van Holland - Maasvlakte - Brielle - Schiedam

Weather: Sunny but not too hot, 23 C

Today was the time for my first self-organized Meet-up. We did the ride that I had planned a few weeks ago for a ride from Den Haag, that we had to cancel due to very strong winds and rain that day (instead I did though that day with an other person from Meetup a ride from Eindhoven to Nijmegen, which was the only part of the Netherlands without severe weather that day - and back wind). 

With Meetup you get people signing up, then signing out, then other people signing in, so until the last moment one cannot really be sure how many people will turn up. However as I enjoy cycling also alone, that's not really a problem and today 2 more turned up, then was planned for, which made us a nice group of 6. 

Only Garmin didn't want to collaborate at all. In Den Haag station, when we were just about to set off it didn't turn on correctly and then it didn't turn off at all. Luckily from Den Haag to Hoek van Holland it is a straightforward ride, which we found easy enough with the help of some street signs an one co-rider who had been riding there before. 

Along the way we stopped at the beach and even held our feet into the - relatively - cold water. 

We were a mixed group, with a German 50% majority (is that a majority?), a Spanish, a Dutch and a Chinese. And also from the bicycle perspective we were very mixed from a Swapsfiets (without gears and front break!) to a mountain bike, some racing bikes and touring bikes. Nicely mixed group, all riding together to one common goal.

After this stop at the beach we continued on to Hoek van Holland and had lunch there in a chiringuito on the beach.

This first part I recorded directly on Strava as Garmin wasn't collaborating at all. During lunch I managed then to restart the device, so intended the record the rest directly on Garmin, but somehow the piece between Maasvlakte and Brielle didn't get stored... grr... (but it was still a nice ride). Isn't it strange how not having an electronic copy of a nice experience feels bad. Why?

While the ride in this first part is over the dune (and with some side winds today), the second part is through the biggest port of Europe (at least initially), with a lot of industry, which make for quite some change. But even out of that industrial area relatively quickly one is again in the countryside and on we went to Brielle, our second (well, third, if you count the beach) stop of the day with a nice ice cream. From Hoek van Holland we took a ferry over. The Swapfiets rider found out that riding on a little bit more on the ferry would bring her closer to Brielle so a subgroup (4 of us) left the ferry in the harbour, while the other two continued a bit mot on the ferry, bringing them closer to Brielle and we met up there. They were faster, notwithstanding the Swapfiets. 

In Brielle we did a small touristic ride of the city and its fortifications and then followed in the "wheel-steps" of a ride Schiedam - Brielle - Rotterdam that I did last year with this same Meet-up group organized by Hans. I remembered that first part from Schiedam to Brielle as specially scenic and varied, and it didn't delude. 

When we came to the hand driven ferry one of the co-riders recognized that this place was actually quite close to Delft, where he and his 2 friends are living, so after (important!) crossing over with that mini ferry, they left towards the left while I ferried (on bicycles) the other two to Schiedam along the route. 

Here the third part of the ride from Brielle to Schiedam:

While the middle part got unrecorded, as somehow Garmin wasn't up to it today.

More Meet-up rides to come :-) 

Meet-up ride around Den Haag

Bicycle: 84 km 

Riding time:  4:40 h
Total ascent: 129 m
Avg speed:  17.8 km/h
Max speed:  33.8 km/h 
Route: A round around Den Haag and from/to Leiden
Weather: Sunny and clouds, 18 C


On this long weekend this was my second day in the saddle... this time on my big idworxs bike... which I haven't really yet started to like... and hell is my "carriage" sore. Such a hard saddle. Tomorrow back to the brompton, narrow saddle but more padding. 

Today I signed up to a Meet-up in Den Haag organized by a guy with whom I rode already twice last year, including a very nice ride out to Brielle. The topic today was a ride just once around Den Haag, and was per description about 37 km... So how did it get into a 84 km adventure? Well, Leiden isn't Den Haag, and I had decided yesterday that 37 km are a bit too lazy, meeting time was late enough (11:00) so that I'd ride out directly from home and ride on the big bike, that's so uncomfortable brining on the train (because so heavy). 

So there I went. I had plotted out yesterday with this web site:
https://en.routeplanner.fietsersbond.nl/ (okay, I know, already over a year riding in the NL, and just found about this page yesterday while on the train to Eindhoven...) a route directly from home to the meeting point, helped by the very small gridded postal codes in the NL, and a setting on the app to go along knooppunten. One can then download the entire route as GPX data and drop into the NEW FILES folder on the garmin. All done! (well, except the ride though). The first part of the ride, I knew very well, just along the train lines on a reserved cycling path far away for many kilometres from any cars, my "don't think about anything, "racing" path". Then into Den Haag, where I actually got semi-lost because of one turn on a parallel (or so it seemed) path from the real one... but it turned out the two where diverging quite rapidly. But well, I found the group and we set off.

This time we were a group of 6, no one with a racing bicycle, like last time (very intimidating to see those guys... but finally also riding with them was actually quite fun ... at least for me... maybe not for them ;-). 3 I already knew, the organizer, an other Dutch guy and a then obviously the same Polish lady with whom I rode yesterday. Plus 2 new guys, a Spaniard and a Briton.

It is amazing how quickly one (well me, today, at least) looses orientation, when just following someone else. I am not someone to loose orientation easily, but if you know that you just need to follow the leader, sense of orientation... bye-bye. At some point we stopped for a short break and I was honestly thinking we were oriented in direction on Rotterdam, and that we'd be pretty close to the sea. Well, I could not have been more wrong. A bit later on we sat down in a nice Italian restaurant with a terras outside, in a nice small old city and were sitting there quite some time, just beside a sluice. I liked the place and someone told me that along that canal one could ride all the way to Amsterdam and that Leiden was in that direction (obviously) as well. Only when we were leaving and I was saying, well "Leidschendam can't be very far from here", the organizer looked at me in mild bewilderment saying "this IS Leidschendam", not knowing how often I had already ridden from Leiden along that very canal to Leidschendam, had come to that very same sluice, crossed it, had a looked at the church, and then turned back.

Here proof of some of my previous excursions to Leidschendam, including one in winter where the canal was slightly frozen (and I had come by bus):

So does this mean my sense of orientation goes South when I follow someone else? Or that all Dutch villages just look alike (at least to me)?

Well, we had nice lunch and then headed back to the centre of Den Haag where we bid our farewells and I continued on my ride back to Leiden.

The meet-up ride was about 42 km, and starts in the below Strava at km 21 until km 63. But for me it was obviously longer and unfortunately at about km 75 saddle soreness kicked in. However if it wouldn't be for that I had a feeling that I could have ridden on, at my pace, to about 100 km without problems. Just need to get a saddle with more cushion. Not sure why this female saddle, specially measured for my buttocks is so uncomfortable on them. I vaguely remember that the bike fitter mentioned that one should sit on the bones... I do have my doubts. And my bones have no doubt at all, they are opposed to this idea with all their stubBONEss.