Tandeming the Netherlands

“Lets go on a tandem holiday”

It wasn’t me who first said this, but my wife. What a great idea. We’ve been keen tandem riders for a number of years now but have mostly kept things very local. Ten, twenty mile rides along well known paths and tracks, the occassional longer ride and once a two day tour. A tandem holiday sounds like an entirely different venture but of course, the next question was, ‘where?’.

After some thought I put the suggestion of Holland forwards. It’s flat, not too far away, easy to get to and has excellent cycling infrastructure so we wouldn’t have to worry about terrible drivers which is always the number one consideration when cycling anywhere in the UK. NO ONE TOLD ME ABOUT THE WIND but more on that later. This suggestion accepted, I began planning things.

Keep it short, few days. Not too far each day, I’m an enthusiastic distance rider but my wife doesn’t have the desire or fitness to go too hard. One of the beauties of tandem riding is the bike converts two different power outputs to one single power down on the road but there’s nothing the fitter rider can do about hours in the saddle for the other. I came up with a vague, general plan over 4 days. Overnight ferry to Rotterdam, Rotterdam to Woerden (65 miles), Woerden to Utrecht (12 miles), sightseeing in Utrecht, Utrecht to Zaltbommel (49 miles), Zaltbommel to Rotterdam (57 miles), ferry back home. Bit ambitious maybe (it was) but bit of preparation and we’d be right. Plus we get to see the amazing cycling infrastructure of Utrecht, lots of canals, some windmills (2 I think) and a large swathe of the Netherlands. Lets do this!

….Oh bugger, we’ve got to get the tandem to Hull for the ferry and it won’t fit in the car. Quick two hundred quid splurge on a tandem rack and we were ready to go. Lets do this!

  Oh, as I was loading the routes into the Garmin, I started to have a panic attack about how well it would perform. I’ve had my Garmin Tour for a number of years now and it has been relentlessly terrible at just about everything a GPS is supposed to do, especially one with ‘Tour’ in it’s name when the battery life is awful. So another last minute splurge on a Wahoo Elemnt (which was an incredibly good decision) and now we were ready to go. Lets do this!

Drive to Hull. *only* just make it due to about 17 crashes on the motorway, stow the bike on the boat, get in our cabin, relax.

You can see my car from up here 😉 Word of warning to people thinking of following in our footsteps. Leaving my car there for four days cost us forty quid. I wasn’t aware we would have to pay, maybe I should have read up on the website a bit better but just be aware. It’s the same price outside as it is inside. Second word of warning, getting on and off the ferry with a bike is awful. I mean truely, completely, uncatered for. At both ends. I expected our end to be ridiculous but not the Dutch. Riding up a very steep loading ramp in heavy rain with a load of angry idiots in cars right behind you is not a pleasant experience. It’s a long way too, be ready to ride when you arrive.

Lovely food and the cabin was surprisingly nice though. Early start when we arrive in Rotterdam. There were all of 6 bikes on the ferry but the Dutch guys let us off first. Quickly get through passport control and within 100 metres we were on an excellent, segregated cyclepath. Raining, natch. Very industrial round the port too. Within about 3 miles we were on a dedicated cyclepath on top of a dyke, nowhere near a road which went on for about 15 miles. Awesome. I mean, off the scale incredible, quality tarmac, dividing line, places for pedestrians to be, marked junctions. Fricking AWESOME.

Look how happy we were…….

Our schedule meant stopping every ten miles for a break but I’d identified towns to stop at as well. This was meant to be relaxing and easy. Coffee stops, beer stops, food all featured in my plan. Now I don’t know if Thursday is a day off in Holland but the first town we got to (Zalmplaat), was closed. Only the supermarket was open. Jumbo supermarkets serve free coffee and snacks, we’ve found. Top tip there.

No worries, onwards along Oude Maas river until we reached Heerjansdam.

Also closed. I mean not one shop or cafe in town was open. Completely shut. Everything.

This was making me look like a bad planner and it should be noted dear reader, my stoker gets nervous when the planning looks bad. All we could do was carry on. Luckily I’d identified a restaurant outside of town which was open. Except it wasn’t a restaurant, it was a swimming pool even though it’s marked as ‘restaurant’ on the map. Open air swimming pool, with zero car parking facilities. If you want to come here, come on a bike.

Another top tip. Lots of smaller businesses, don’t take UK Visa Debit cards. Carry cash or Mastercard.

Tosti and disgusting coffee, nice rest, chat to the exceptionally nice swimming pool staff lady and on we go. I should note here that absolutely everybody we met, without exception, was lovely. Really nice, kind, friendly, helpful, happy people. I’m sure there are horrible people in Holland but we didn’t meet any. Virtually everyone speaks incredibly good English too, especially young people. Which is good because my Dutch is below toddler level.

Rain now. Lots of. And our first windmill.

Slikkerveer would bring us our first ferry crossing, of which there are a great many in Holland. I was a bit nervous but there was no need. Locals saw our confusion and pretty much marched us to the right boat and told us what to do.

As we headed out into the countryside, the rain continued but the wind really picked up, proper headwind. Oh, and the cycling infrastructure disappeared. Not totally but we spent a lot of time on narrow roads, heads down, battling.

I will share with you a point now which you may not be unaware of. There is a myth, that Dutch drivers, are better than British drivers. This myth is founded on the principle that there are a lot more cyclists in Holland so drivers are more familiar with them but also that drivers are far more likely to be cyclists too.

RUBBISH. I can confirm that Dutch drivers are just as awful as British drivers. Close passes, speeding, not looking where they are going. There was nothing malicious that we saw but as far as not being able to drive very well, right up there with the incredibly low standard you’ll find in Britain.

It was also around this time that my stoker broke. Don’t know why or what but lots of pain and distinct drop in power output. Really struggling to spend long periods of time in the saddle. The stops became more frequent and clearly finding it hard going. I tried to take on a lot of the work but short of her lifting her feet off the pedals, she had to do something as well. We limped into Woerden mid-evening after 66 miles, way behind schedule. At least the next day was only 12 miles.

Day 2.

12 miles into Utrecht

I thought we’d seen good cycling infrastructure up to this point but it was time to get blown away. Stunning thought put into everything. Cyclists get priority everywhere, traffic lights for cyclists at junctions complete with buttons or automatic sensors. There is a cycle path everywhere no matter where you want to go. Simply amazing.

Arrived without a hitch and had a nice rest day exploring.

Also, it didn’t rain most of the time. Which was nice.

I got to fulfill one of my dreams. Sit in front of a side street bar watching people ride past on their dutch bikes. Could have spent all day here.

Lovely evening out in Utrecht, beautiful city.

WHAT THE HELL?????

Ahem. 12 miles done today.

 

Day 3

Nervous start. We didn’t know how long my stoker would be able to go for but today had 49 miles on the tab. Leaving Utrecht was a dream, and we quickly headed out into the country on beautiful paths. We were to ride down through Utrecht national park in the forest. Sadly, for the first and only time, this was the first (and only) time Fietsersbond (the website I’d planned all the routes with), let us down. Some of the tracks were just sandy footpaths, completely unrideable. We managed to detour round one thanks to a local lady but we had to push some way down another. The picture below is one of the better ones. And our second and last windmill.

The weather turned bad as we entered Doorn so we holed up in a cafe for a short while and after a short argument with the GPS, headed down to the ferry.

Now things got bad. The wind really started hammering us. I was down on the drops just putting everything I had onto the road and we were doing no more than 12 mph for a long way. A few more sandy paths and the tandem just got thrown at the side of the road while we calmed down.

Lets just take some time to consider the tandem experience. You *have* to communicate, constantly. Sometimes you communicate with your legs. An experienced captain (which I like to think I am), can feel how the stoker is doing by how much effort is going in and in what manner. If it’s jerky, there’s an issue. And things were very jerky. With the last two cafes on the map not even there, we agreed to hole up in the next one which touch wood, was still there, would be open, and decide what to do because we weren’t going to get where we were going at this rate.

Frites, tosti and coca cola and we elected to take the shortest route possible to Zaltbommel which would lose us about 6 miles. No complaints here. Head wind, superb cycle lane alongside the main road, big bridge, do it! We rolled into Zaltbommel very wet, very tired, very broken. Our hotel, the cheapest of the trip, looked like a travel lodge but turned out to be very nice indeed….except…..

….you can watch each other going to the toilet and shower? Even if you don’t want to? I dunno, is this a Dutch thing? It’s certainly too liberal for two old Brits so we agreed one would leave the room if the other wanted to go for a poo.

Over evening meal, we agreed that 57 miles for day 4 was too much. Alternative methods of transport required. We were about to make an astonishingly good decision. We were going to take the train.

Day 4

Nervous again, I don’t like planning stuff on the fly and I’ve never tried to take a tandem onto a Dutch train before. Our journey would take us back to utrecht on one train, another train to Rotterdam. Then a 21 mile ride back to the port. Gulp.

Again, silly me. I’d forgotten a) We were in Holland and b) There are Dutch people here.

BIKE LIFT up to the platform. A BIKE LIFT!!!!!! Which we used a few times because we couldn’t work out which platform to get to. Eventually a lovely young man called Francis took pity on us and told us what to do. TANDEM ON A TRAIN PICTURE.

I doubt it would have been so easy if it wasn’t a Sunday but freaking look at it!!! Trains every half hour, everything was spotless, BIKE LIFT. I like trains too. This was next level brilliance. Try getting a bike onto a British train. There will be someone sat in the folding seats who refuses to move or there will be another bike there already. And you have to book three years in advance and even if you do, no guarantees. Read this and weep, terrible british rail companies. And a tandem. Strictly barred on all British trains despite being shorter than two normal bikes.

Francis kindly stayed with us and it turned out he was going to Rotterdam too so would stay with us all the way. The conductor rocked up, didn’t try to kick us off or demand extra money, just went ‘AWESOME TANDEM ON MY TRAIN’. Britain, you’re doing it wrong. Francis enquired if there would be any issues at Utrecht. The conductor didn’t know but was he going to find out? Of course he was, he’s Dutch. TEN MINUTE conversation between him and Francis whilst they arranged for space. WTF??????

Utrecht train station. Francis: “Follow me” More BIKE LIFTS, train rocks up. There are people and baggage where our bike is going but don’t you worry about that, this is Holland. Everyone fricking well gets up and moves their bags out of the way!!!!! Francis helps me lift the bike onto the train, we jam it in the corner. We are on our way to Rotterdam.

TANDEM ON TRAIN PICTURE

That’s Francis. Lovely man. Someone else looks very happy too. Almost like she doesn’t know there’s a 21 mile ride to do….aaahhh, I forgot to mention it. Looks like there’s a tricky conversation on the way.

I’m sure it’ll be fine 🤔

Rotterdam station. Sparklingly clean. Francis bids us farewell and sets off to see his friend. Farewell sweet prince. We wait for the platform to clear and I decide now is the time to explain just how far we have to travel. See that smile up there? Gone now. (Mixture of awesome train station pictures below)

We leave the station and ride through….some rather grim parts of Rotterdam. All quiet though but fairly dodgy looking. It feels now like our journey is almost at an end but no, wonderful, beautiful Holland has one more ace up it’s sleeve. We have to cross the Nieuwe Maas which I assumed would be over the bridge but as we approached, it became apparent there was no bridge. Oh god, we’re going to have to turn around, a very unpopular move I expect.

BIKE LIFT AND BIKE TUNNEL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holland you are truly spoiling us.

Rest of the journey was uneventful if you call constant suffering and increasingly frayed tempers, uneventful. We got there in the end though. Might have got a bit drunk on the boat too.  I did have issues with the route. The Wahoo had been faultless to this point but asking it to take me somewhere, while on the surface, looked like it worked, didn’t. A number of dead ends, sometimes the route wasn’t in the right place on the screen, the flashing lights for turn by turn made no sense whatsoever. Supported by google maps though, we rocked up with plenty of time to spare. There was one scary moment when it told me the name of another rider nearby which I have no idea what that was about.

Back in blighty no special treatment for cyclists so we have to queue, on foot while pushing the bike, in amongst all the cars. Pathetic.

Summary
Holland has awesome cycle infrastructure, just amazing. Almost faultless. Even on the narrow country lanes, the white lines either side and no centre line seem to work really well. If you get into a city it’s mind blowingly good. Keep your eyes and ears open for cyclists and mopeds though, they are everywhere and the Dutch ride fast and confident. The train system appears to be out of the this world for quality if you’re on a bike. That *was* faultless. if you’re going, get a train at some point. 

Right, it was windy. A lot. And very strong, and lots of directions. Be ready for that. It rained a lot too.

Cafes and bars weren’t as commonplace as I’d been lead to believe. They were hard to find too. Carry food and spare water. Some of them are…..odd. A couple out in the boonies were Deliverance level creepy.

Wahoo Elemnt was great with the planned routes, almost perfect apart from a couple of road closures that no-one could have predicted. With take me there on the app it wasn’t very good, perhaps it doesn’t understand dutch cycle paths or something, dunno. I was told repeatedly that Komoot works really well but I couldn’t get it to work.

Junctions took a bit of confidence. When we stopped at lights lots of people just rode past. Many junctions give the cyclists priority but for a Brit it’s nerve-wracking watching to see if cars will stop at their give way (they always did). by the end we were just riding across when we knew we had priority but we had to learn what the little arrows and funny graphic equaliser signs on the road meant.

https://en.routeplanner.fietsersbond.nl was fantastic for planning the route. Apart from the sandy paths near Utrecht it was spot on perfect all the way. Recommended.

Would I go again? Yes, I think as a holiday tandem type thing with less mileage, I would. Would I go by myself to notch up to long miles? No. To be frank it’d be a bit dull. Holland is very flat and riding for mile after mile on faultless cycle path would start to lose it’s interest quickly I think. They’ve made the cycle network what it should be, an interconnected, safe, utilitarian, prioritised solution to cars but once you’ve got over that, it’s just that.

Fin.