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.

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.

Ride for 2 pictures from Leidschendam

Bicycle: 29 km 
Riding time:  1:47 h
Total ascent: 29 m
Avg speed:  16.1 km/h
Max speed:  31.7 km/h 
Route: Leiden - Vlietland - Leidschendam - Leiden
Weather: Sunny and warm, 21 C

When we asked our friend who was staying for the weekend with us, what he'd like to do today at breakfast, he mentioned that the ride in bicycle yesterday evening was nice... So off we went for an other ride, this time a bit farer out. 

Our first stop was a beach on Vlietland, where we left my husband sleeping on a blanket, while we continued South towards Leidschendam. We didn't have that much time, as our friend needed to get on a bus at 13:45 at Lammerschans, so the two of us "speeded" down the channel to Leidschendam, took two pictures ...

... and back we came to Vlietland, where my husband was already awaiting us along the river to ride more back to Leiden and the bus that would pick up our friend for him to return to Brussels. Japanese style tourism ... but on a bicycle. 

Finally we arrived to Lammerschans from where his bus departed 30 min before departure so had all the time to say our good byes, fold up the poor brompton again and put it in the basket and then riding slowly home with the strange baggage. 

Picnic on Zoetermeer and then some cycling

Bicycle: 64 km 
Riding time:  4:28 h
Total ascent: 153 m
Avg speed:  16.0 km/h
Max speed:  29.2 km/h 
Route: South to Zoetermeer for some picnic and then later in the afternoon up to the North to Brassemermeer
Weather: Sunny and nicely warm

Today in the morning my husband prepared a cold rice salad, a very Italian family dish, which we didn't eat in ages and then we packed it all up (plus a kg of cherries) and set of for Zoetermeer to have some picnic there. I didn't really know if or where there is a picnic place on that lake, but it seemed likely enough that there should be some.

And hell there was, with beach and everything:

Where everything included a lot of people doing barbecues. On the way to this spot, we also came through a nice village:

After resting on the beach in the shadow of some trees, we returned back home, as my husband needed to travel on to Bologna... So more time for me to cycle.

After a rest at home, I restarted my ride, without a really clear goal, but just thought that going North might be a good idea. So I went. At some point I decided to follow the "Molens & Meerroute"...

... and was "rewarded" by multiple windmills with cows:

... of windmills with cows and sailboats (yes, up there on the right of the windmill is a sailing boat):

It was also a ride to inaugurate a new cycling pants I just bought this week.