Cycling adventures across Yorkshire, Britain and beyond
Luxembourg likes to style itself as a cycling country these days, rather than say a tax haven. (So, the opposite of what Tory Britain is doing.) Today I got a glimpse of that, with a mixture of mostly lovely cycling which took me down most of the country to the capital, via the very Central…
A big small country, or a small big country? As European micro-states go, Luxembourg is macro. By dwarf standards, a giant. At 2,600km2, it’s positively Russian compared to compact Andorra (468km2), tiny Malta (316km2), bijou Liechtenstein (160km2), minuscule San Marino (61km2), microscopic Monaco (2km2), and nano-scale Vatican City (0.4km2). A proper country, with its own…
I started my Netherlands End to End at the Highest Point, down at Drielandenpunt near Maastricht, so – as I’d been a couple of days in Rotterdam – I couldn’t resist going to the Lowest Point today, between there and Gouda. At 6.76m beneath NAP (normaal Amsterdams piel, in other words, essentially, sea level) it’s…
Having completed the Netherlands End to End, I added the country’s middle point today. I seem to be collecting them: I’ve cycled to national foci in Britain, Belgium and Portugal recently. The centre of the country – in other words, the point at which a piece of cheese the shape of the Netherlands would balance,…
I finished the Dutch End to End today by riding the short last leg up to Noordkaap: the lonely, windy, northernmost point of the mainland, with little but electricity pylons, wind turbines and the odd oystercatcher for company. Another F route took me fast and car-free right from my hostel in the centre of Groningen…
A lovely long, easy day of tailwind scooting along the LF9’s make-believe seashore, going through a variety-pack of flat Frisian landscapes: heathland, marsh, woods, new towns. It was about as wild and remote as the Netherlands gets… well, ‘wild and remote’ in the same sense that the Yorkshire Pennines can get ‘lush and tropical’. But…
I followed an imaginary coastline today: where the Netherlands would meet the North Sea if it hadn’t been for centuries of land reclamation. Given the recent few months of incessant rain and a fair bit of standing water still in fields, as in England, it wasn’t that hard to imagine. I started in Zwolle with…
Another day of banktop riding, with sunshine in the afternoon, following the meanders of the IJssel river on the LF3. I wasn’t due in Zwolle at my accommodation tonight until 7pm, giving me plenty of time to dawdle, which at the pace I cycle on my folder is just as well. After leaving the raucous…
A change of pace today, as I switched from direct, roadside commuter paths to a leisure route, the LF3. The change being from a slow pace to an even slower one. The first half of the day was on one of the most famous fast-commuting bike paths in the country, though: the F325 from Nijmegen…
Energised by a fine Dutch breakfast from my lovely Warmshowers hosts Jaap and Rie, I set off into a day-long headwind for the 45-mile-ish haul along roadside bike paths to Nijmegen. Dutch breakfasts evidently include eggs, bacon, rye bread, curranty bread rolls, and chocolate shavings. And coffee, and tea, and entertaining chat. I think I…