Recumbentpacking in the Netherlands

[Cudzoziemiec]

I really want to know what our darksiders make of this. Comment from Dutch people could be good too.
https://bikepacking.com/plog/recumbentpacking-the-netherlands/

[Kim]

Looks like a Nazca Fiero:  General-purpose bike for small people.  Never met one in the flesh, but I expect it's reasonably well-behaved once you get your head round under-seat steering.

I haven't ridden in .nl for long enough for the novelty of flatness and infrastructure to wear off.  I expect the lack of Scenery (other than the occasional bridge and sands-of-doom forest track) would bug me too after a while.  Campsite entertainment appears to be meeting random mad people.  If you don't meet any, it means you're the random mad person.

From the title, I'm disappointed that the luggage was in sensible panniers, rather than creatively velcroed in interesting places.  3/10 for effort, must try harder.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Bikepackers, or at least bikepacking.com, have fully embraced panniers. Along with frame bags, nodding tail packs, bar rolls, basket bags, Carradice-style transverse saddlebags... bikepackers just love bags! Except, perhaps, handbags.

[Kim]

Except, perhaps, handbags.

They're probably acceptable if you fit them with a Brompton block.

[Lightning Phil]

Bikepackers, or at least bikepacking.com, have fully embraced panniers. Along with frame bags, nodding tail packs, bar rolls, basket bags, Carradice-style transverse saddlebags... bikepackers just love bags! Except, perhaps, handbags.

Ah, so they’ve embraced touring 

[Socks]

I found the focus of the article a bit confused.  He has at least described using a recumbent and the comfort compared to an upright.  But expecting a challenging  rough stuff  experience in the Netherlands seems a bit unrealistic.  And yes, the flatlands might seem tame in those terms.  Unless you get a headwind...  However there are more scenic routes eg the dunes along the coast, areas like the Hoge Veluwe national park.  Maybe just a different set of expectations.

[mzjo]

A sunday colour supplement article about bright young things seen from a recumbent. I did read it right to the end, much as I would a colour supplement article and finished no wiser about where he had been or what he had actually done. As a way of seducing me to trying a similar activity it fell flat. Not that I am not regularly tempted by the idea to pull out the old Dino, stick the tent on its rack and pedal off into the wild blue yonder (and never follow through with the temptation, sedentary slob that I am) but there really is nothing here to even boost that ambition.

Incidentally isn't a bar roll something usually consumed in a hostelry and accompanied by a foaming beverage? Or am I living in the wrong world? 

[Cudzoziemiec]

I found the focus of the article a bit confused.  He has at least described using a recumbent and the comfort compared to an upright.  But expecting a challenging  rough stuff  experience in the Netherlands seems a bit unrealistic.  And yes, the flatlands might seem tame in those terms.  Unless you get a headwind...  However there are more scenic routes eg the dunes along the coast, areas like the Hoge Veluwe national park.  Maybe just a different set of expectations.

I felt those were twin focuses, fairly equally weighted, as his buying the recumbent coincided with moving to the Netherlands.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Or am I living in the wrong world?

We are all in the wrong world. Until we reach the next one, when this one might turn out to have been the right one.

[ElyDave]

Incidentally isn't a bar roll something usually consumed in a hostelry and accompanied by a foaming beverage? Or am I living in the wrong world?

Wrong may be  abit harsh, perhaps parallel, alternative, multiversal...

[fd3]

A sunday colour supplement article about bright young things seen from a recumbent. I did read it right to the end, much as I would a colour supplement article and finished no wiser about where he had been or what he had actually done. As a way of seducing me to trying a similar activity it fell flat. Not that I am not regularly tempted by the idea to pull out the old Dino, stick the tent on its rack and pedal off into the wild blue yonder (and never follow through with the temptation, sedentary slob that I am) but there really is nothing here to even boost that ambition.

Incidentally isn't a bar roll something usually consumed in a hostelry and accompanied by a foaming beverage? Or am I living in the wrong world?

You show more patience than I - I dnfed.
And surely a bar roll is a euphemism.

[Lightning Phil]

But expecting a challenging  rough stuff  experience

Bike packing has long since ceased being used to only describe rough stuff off road. It’s used a lot now for trips which are basically indistinguishable from an on road tour.

[Mr Larrington]

My chum Gunnar has been doing workpacking this year, which consists of working from home, where home = cargo bike + tent.

[quixoticgeek]

Ye gods. it Hurts. So ignorant. ARGH!

J

[quixoticgeek]

"The Netherlands is heaven for cyclists, but it’s a certain hell for bikepackers."

No you just suck at planning. And are unable to appreciate beauty.

J

[Auntie Helen]

And the Netherlands is not a haven for ALL cyclists - it’s worse for velomobilists than Germany, for example.

[Cudzoziemiec]

But expecting a challenging  rough stuff  experience

Bike packing has long since ceased being used to only describe rough stuff off road. It’s used a lot now for trips which are basically indistinguishable from an on road tour.

The writer was complaining about lack of dirt trails and wild spaces though, not roads.

[Cudzoziemiec]

My chum Gunnar has been doing workpacking this year, which consists of working from home, where home = cargo bike + tent.

Could also be known as jobtenting?

[quixoticgeek]

The writer was complaining about lack of dirt trails and wild spaces though, not roads.

Clearly didn't try hard enough...

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

The writer was complaining about lack of dirt trails and wild spaces though, not roads.

Clearly didn't try hard enough...

J

I just had a look, there are actually two routes in the Netherlands on bikepacking website. Obviously you could make others. But the longest is only 211km and judging by the photos is mostly farmland: https://bikepacking.com/locations/netherlands/
I get the impression he really wants the kind of bikepacking where you don't see signs of human habitation for several days.

[Lightning Phil]

But expecting a challenging  rough stuff  experience

Bike packing has long since ceased being used to only describe rough stuff off road. It’s used a lot now for trips which are basically indistinguishable from an on road tour.

The writer was complaining about lack of dirt trails and wild spaces though, not roads.

Was he?  The article was such a random collection of thoughts it was hard to get a sense of what exactly he was trying to convey.

[quixoticgeek]

I just had a look, there are actually two routes in the Netherlands on bikepacking website. Obviously you could make others. But the longest is only 211km and judging by the photos is mostly farmland: https://bikepacking.com/locations/netherlands/
I get the impression he really wants the kind of bikepacking where you don't see signs of human habitation for several days.

"I'm in the most densely populated country in the EU, and I see signs of humans everywhere, I don't understand"


If you're limiting yourself to what's on bike packing dot com, then you're just not trying hard enough.

The route for RATN GX is available in public on komoot. That'll give you a good start...

And as for my first point. The Netherlands isn't a dense country. It's an empty city. At least in the west

https://brilliantmaps.com/empty-netherlands/

One of the amazing things about cycling in the Netherlands is I can ride for half an hour and have left the city behind and be out in green land.

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

But expecting a challenging  rough stuff  experience

Bike packing has long since ceased being used to only describe rough stuff off road. It’s used a lot now for trips which are basically indistinguishable from an on road tour.

The writer was complaining about lack of dirt trails and wild spaces though, not roads.

Was he?  The article was such a random collection of thoughts it was hard to get a sense of what exactly he was trying to convey.

He was complaining about almost everything he encountered, even while at the same time enjoying some of them, and it was a bit random, but I thought he was definitely complaining about the lack of wild spaces and dirt to ride one. In this paragraph:

There is no wild camping in the Netherlands. None at all. The Netherlands has the 22nd highest population density in the world, and behind Monaco, the highest in Europe. And just 1% of the Dutch surface area is considered “wild nature.” There are no long, peaceful rides through the countryside without the whirring of electric motors, the smell of pancakes, the dings of bells, and the fervent moving to the side as groups of cyclists come rushing the other way. There is no camping outside of campgrounds, and in these campgrounds, there is no peaceful morning coffee overlooking sunrise on the mountains ahead. The sunrise is always behind a tree or a building. The babies always cry and the neighbors always snore. The bathrooms are always clean and the tent is always wet. The Netherlands is heaven for cyclists, but it’s a certain hell for bikepackers.

But at the same time, he enjoys it – or at least appreciates the possibility of riding a recumbent:

I learned that nothing is really that dorky and embarrassing if it grants you access to something otherwise inaccessible. And self-powered movement had become inaccessible after the surgery. I had missed the world around me, and this had closed that gap. I also thought of the Netherlands. Of this heaven and hell, of this promised land that falls a bit too short for me. And I guess I had accepted it by the time I returned to my shortly adopted home in Amsterdam. No place is perfect. There is no San Diego with Dutch health care and Dutch bike lanes. There probably never will be. Life is accepting disappointment. And bikepacking is an exercise in life.

[quixoticgeek]

Taken next to a prehistoric monument in Drenthe. On a dirt bike trail.

J

[Cudzoziemiec]

QG, you think he could have found something "wilder" if he'd tried – but what do you think of what he did find? Including the people, even the ones not called Jan, and the fries with mayonnaise, etc?