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.