Meet-up ride: Tilburg - s'Hertogenbosch - Nijmegen

Bicycle: 81 km 

Riding time: 4:22 h
Total ascent: 183 m
Avg speed: 17.3 km/h
Max speed: 36.0 km/h 
Route: Tilburg - s'Hertogenbosch - Nijmegen
Weather: Sunny, a few drops of rain and STRONG tailwind, 23 C

So, today I had planned "the Quintessential route of Holland" around Leiden. But... I hadn't counted on the "Quintessential Dutch" strong wind. 

While still waking up, one of the co-riders pinged me on Meetup asking if we'd still be going ahead. I had closed the window during the night and wasn't aware on just HOW windy it was outside. After checking a bit the forecast, it looked like there were going to be winds of strength 6 all day today around Leiden... So not ideal for a round trip. 

After a little bit of further exploration with the help of Buienradar, I came up with a completely new, and much longer route, from Tilburg to Nijmegen, that had incorporated a strong tailwind. 

I had never been in Tilburg, s'Hertogenbosch or anywhere in that region, but thanks to route planner of the Fietserbond I was able to plan a route while on the train using the knooppunten system, which normally (and also today) assures quite scenic rides. I did a few manual modifications to the basic planning routing it even through more countryside and it really paid off. We had very nice and - for Dutch standards - quite varied landscape. Forrest, fields, small farmer villages, and an old city in the form of s'Hertogenbosch. But for me the highlight of the day was a small landscape of heath in full bloom. I think I have never seen that. In my entire life! So that was quite an experience:

Riding on we needed to cross the Maas, and - not surprising to me, as I had seen it in the route planned - but surprising to my co-riders, we embarked on a small ferry, which did run on demand. On our demand. A private crossing of the river. 

Thanks for the very strong tailwind it felt sometimes as if the bicycle had gotten a motor. Very relaxing ride. However when we needed to turn (occassionally) and got headwind (only in very few cases) or sidewinds, the wind was STRONG. 

Actually back in Leiden on my way back from the station, I nearly got to a standstill on the middle of a street crossing due to a strong side-headwind. 

Here the map of our ride today: 

Meet-up Ride: Leiden - Gouda - Kinderdijk - Dordrecht

Bicycle: 66 km 

Riding time: 4:09 h
Total ascent: 75 m
Avg speed: 15.8 km/h
Max speed: 38.5 km/h 
Route: Leiden - Gouda - Kinderdijk - Dordrecht
Weather: Sunny and quite hot, 24 C

Some weeks ago I had done this nearly same ride already, and found specially the ride from Gouda to Kinderdijk (and the ice cream just before Kinderdijk) really enjoyable. Compared to the ride I had done alone, the only planned change was how to ride out of Leiden as I had discovered the other day a really nice "through the countryside" small path towards Boskoop.

Apart from that it was nearly copy-paste from that earlier ride, including the lunch stop just prior to Gouda, in a restaurant in the countryside. Only that this time we could sit outside. (Last time, I tried outside, but it started raining, so I took refuge inside and got 2 pannenkoeken... waiting out the rain. This time no rain... so one pannenkoeken only. Actually this time it wasn't only "no rain", it was actually quite hot. Too hot for me to ride with the helmet, but just about right without it.

After lunch we passed through the center of Gouda and then outside into the country side as well.

Unfortunately in the middle of nowhere and about 10 km from Gouda one of the ride participants punctured and no one had a repair kit with him/her. Probably should get one... although I have not the slightest idea how to repair a bicycle... but she seemed to know... only that we didn't have any tools at all. After discussing a bit the options (including riding on the back of one of the bicycles to the next station, she finally decided to hike back to Gouda. That probably took her 1.5-2 hours, as we were really in the middle of nowhere and Gouda was the closest train station of all.

The remaining 3 of us, among them Kasia one of the regulars at the Meetups (see several prior posts), road on.  Had our ice cream break just before Kinderdijk, then road through the tourist hordes (already much less than in plain daytime) and onwards towards Dordrecht. Kasia got a bit tired, and it was admittedly really, really hot, so we took a ferry quite early on into Dordrecht and cut the ride short by probably around 10 km. And had this very nice and very fast ferry ride:

Me trying to take a selfie... not ideal...

The ferry brought us right into the centre of Dordrecht, and I still think that getting into Dordrecht is the one and only correct way how to approach this city.