Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.Chicago Al
08-06-11, 03:09 PM
This is off-topic but as I mainly hang out here I thought one post would not be out of place.
My wife and I just returned from a long-desired three week trip to Europe, a week of which was a cycling trip through North and South Holland. I booked it through a local company which supplied the bikes (rather heavy Dutch style 'touring' bikes with Nexus 8-sp), did the routing, booked the B&B accomodations (very cozy and 'gezellig'), and arranged for our bags to travel ahead of us by courier. In short a very tame, easy kind of touring, esp as our mileage was probably never more than 40/day. And of course all but a bit in the dunes was flat.
So, not very serious cycle touring..but the most important goal of all was achieved: my wife loved it. She's even talking about doing it again next year. And though I could have gone for something more challenging, a bit anyway, it was a very enjoyable, relaxing trip: beautiful countryside, lovely old towns like Leiden, Delft, Utrecht. The tour operator is a genius of routing (he's also a surveyor) so we'd do zig-zags in order to pass by things he thought we would like to see. The approach to Delft ended in a spiral through the old town, though the market square, along quiet canals and past the Oude Kirk before coming to the door of our B&B, right as the sun came out from the clouds...I'll never forget that.
We got unseasonable weather for mid-July, cool (temps in the 60s-low 70s daytime) and rainy. We were kinda ready for that, could have done better, but in the end the weather was just part of the adventure.
Nederlands is obviously the most bike-oriented country in the world, and I can't emphasize enough how *easy* it is ride there, anywhere, city or country. It's obviously good for their national health, but I don't know that many people there ride for fitness or exercise...they just ride *to get someplace* and they do it all the time. And they don't need a special bike for that either, almost all the bikes you see are strictly utilitarian.
While in Amsterdam I saw maybe 10 or 12 old lightweight bikes in a week, but out away from town there were recreational cyclists on all kinds of road bikes, mostly new but a few older. One of our B&B hosts in fact had a beautiful pair of Zeilemanns, one blue and one yellow.
I could go on and on (already have!), and I'll happily do more if anyone PMs me for details, but I'll close for now before this gets to sound any more like a commercial. However I will attach some pics:
My wife and I just returned from a long-desired three week trip to Europe, a week of which was a cycling trip through North and South Holland. I booked it through a local company which supplied the bikes (rather heavy Dutch style 'touring' bikes with Nexus 8-sp), did the routing, booked the B&B accomodations (very cozy and 'gezellig'), and arranged for our bags to travel ahead of us by courier. In short a very tame, easy kind of touring, esp as our mileage was probably never more than 40/day. And of course all but a bit in the dunes was flat.
So, not very serious cycle touring..but the most important goal of all was achieved: my wife loved it. She's even talking about doing it again next year. And though I could have gone for something more challenging, a bit anyway, it was a very enjoyable, relaxing trip: beautiful countryside, lovely old towns like Leiden, Delft, Utrecht. The tour operator is a genius of routing (he's also a surveyor) so we'd do zig-zags in order to pass by things he thought we would like to see. The approach to Delft ended in a spiral through the old town, though the market square, along quiet canals and past the Oude Kirk before coming to the door of our B&B, right as the sun came out from the clouds...I'll never forget that.
We got unseasonable weather for mid-July, cool (temps in the 60s-low 70s daytime) and rainy. We were kinda ready for that, could have done better, but in the end the weather was just part of the adventure.
Nederlands is obviously the most bike-oriented country in the world, and I can't emphasize enough how *easy* it is ride there, anywhere, city or country. It's obviously good for their national health, but I don't know that many people there ride for fitness or exercise...they just ride *to get someplace* and they do it all the time. And they don't need a special bike for that either, almost all the bikes you see are strictly utilitarian.
While in Amsterdam I saw maybe 10 or 12 old lightweight bikes in a week, but out away from town there were recreational cyclists on all kinds of road bikes, mostly new but a few older. One of our B&B hosts in fact had a beautiful pair of Zeilemanns, one blue and one yellow.
I could go on and on (already have!), and I'll happily do more if anyone PMs me for details, but I'll close for now before this gets to sound any more like a commercial. However I will attach some pics: