Meet-up ride: Haarlem to Den Haag

Bicycle: 71 km 

Riding time: 4:09 h
Total ascent: 241 m
Avg speed: 17.2 km/h
Max speed: 37.4 km/h 
Route: Haarlem - Noordwijk - Den Haag - Leiden
Weather: Cloudy and tailwind, 17 C

Today Hans from the Den Haag Meet-up group organized a ride from Den Haag to Haarlem... well, at least that was the initial intention. But seeing the wind forecast he very wisely inverted the direction to be Haarlem - Den Haag, which gave us a nice tail wind while riding over the dunes. 

We met up at Haarlem station, actually most participants arriving on the same train. Just when we came out of the station it started to drizzle lightly... grr... it also looked very grey. But well, there we were, nothing to be done than start riding. Which we did after Kasia and I clad ourselves in our protective clothing. 

We passed quickly through the main square of Haarlem and already there the drizzle stopped (so probably after 5 minutes or so). Hans then guided us expertly out of the city on on the dunes. Kasia and I after a while stripped out of our rain clothes again, never to wear them again for the rest if the ride. 

The ride then was over the dunes, which offer a surprisingly varied landscape. Open sandy zones, but also forested areas. 

Shortly before Noordwijk we were hold up by a half marathon (or at least some running event) with thousands of participants:

Shortly after, in Noordwijk we had our lunch stop at a nice beach restaurant, and although it was really windy, we got a good table right in a corner protected from the wind, so that when the sun came out, it got actually nicely warm there. Otherwise, although we at 14th of July... it was more like an autumn weather. But not too bad for riding a bicycle, specially as it never rained again. 

We had a relaxed lunch together and then a few of us - me included - went for a short walk along the beach and getting our feet wet. But the water was cold. There were nearly no swimmers in the water, only a few surfers, but well dressed surfers.

Then we continued on paths that I know better from my frequent evening cycling tours, always along the sea and to Den Haag. Somewhere along the ride, when we had anyway stopped to regroup, I "assaulted" some passing hikers, and we got a nice group picture taken:

As always with these Meet-ups it is nice to ride a bicycle, but it is even nicer to just chat with the other people on the ride while being on your bicycles and more or less leisurely riding along. In 7 one can easily chat with everyone for some time, get to know new people. So really a great invention! 

Arriving in Den Haag Hans guided us to the very centre where we had a last drink all together, before slowly splitting up. I had decided to cycle back to Leiden and Kasia did come along as well, with a half idea to maybe cycle the entire way back to Amsterdam... but then we had the wind against us. It wasn't super hard, but definitely a noticeable difference. 

Tomorrow more, but then only around Leiden (around Kagerplassen).

Actually today was my first ride in like 10 days, as the weather this week wasn't very good, yesterday I was too lazy and last weekend we went with other friends from an other Meet-up to do canoeing in Utrecht, which was a lot of fun and surprisingly wasn't so hard as I thought...