Alex in the Cities
Cycling

Going Dutch, again

Alex

I first went to the Netherlands in 2013, not long after the London Cycling Campaign’s Love London, Go Dutch campaign had turned my head towards the low countries and the range of blogging exponents of cycling over there. I took my Brompton, helmet and helmet camera and tried to shoot film of the experience. A rough draft sits on my hard drive somewhere, but I never got anything done with that. The hashtag #nuttygoesdutch did a little better on twitter.

I did go for the odd trip to the Netherlands in the years since, but never had more than a few days. So last weekend I came back from a fuller cycle tour around the Netherlands. I went for a week, and camped my way around a loop exploring cities and rural areas as I cycled. I gave myself a new hashtag of #nuttyFietstocht and tweeted the odd interesting thing.

But I also took a lot of video (this time mounted from my handlebars not my head), and ran my GPS the time to keep track of what I saw and where I was. The GPS tracks are easy to make into something I can share, and so here’s a couple of maps of…

Where I went in the UK to get to the ferry and back:
tracks of my route from London to Harwich and back on the UK leg of my cycle tour
I found quite a lot of interest in the UK legs of the journey – somewhat to my surprise!

And where I went in the Netherlands:
Track of my loop of the Netherlands from Hook of holland heading south along coast then due East to Den Bosch and Arnhem before returning West to the Hook again

The video is going to take a while to really use well, but I’m optimistic I’ll write up the highlights of each day in a few posts in the coming weeks and months (it’ll be over by Christmas, honest). For now, here’s an exciting photo of some SD cards.

a pile of microSD cards

Cor! If you’re interested, I wound up with this many (plus a couple more) because I worked out a bundle of cards was still cheaper than buying a SD card to hard drive backup device, just.

And a quick screen grab of the impressively comprehensive crack covering works on the first path I rode off the ferry.

photo of cycle path in the netherlands with cracks covered by bitumen