I’ve been working in The Hague for five months. There’s been some exceptions, another client in Switzerland, but that means getting on plane from Schiphol to Basel. Otherwise every Monday morning I hop on the first flight from Southampton to Amsterdam and every Friday I fly back. The saving grace is that my Airnimal sits in the hotel staff bike park and I go out most evenings after work in the dark (and often the rain). On Wednesday nights I get my legs ripped off by the Lola Cycling Club who meet at the Lola café just down the road. Being away from home so much means that I promised my wife that I wouldn’t go cycling at the weekends (my promise not hers).
So she came up with the suggestion that I do some Dutch audaxes while I’m here and, with Ivo posting a list of events, I found myself heading towards Bunnik, a forty minute train journey to Utrecht and then a 6km ride to the start at a café and hotel in the middle of what looks likc a country park. My Airnimal attracted more attention than the several velomobiles parked in a line. I met with Quixotic Geek, a fellow forumite at the start. Then we are away. The whole route is on cycle paths and some shared use roads where it seems bikes have priority. But that means lots of short tight turns, dodging road furniture and other mayhem. I’ve been riding in a tight group with the Lolas and the Airnimal is really nippy around tight turns, so I lost Quixotic Geek in the first kilometre.
I chose the second group, not the really fast guys, which turned out to be the right decision. We were a group of about eight, including two guys from Enschede in Germany, for whom this ride was more local than many of the German events. Eight became six and then four as we battled into a steady but not impossible headwind. The only hills were climbing out of the polders and onto the dykes in this completely engineered landscape. We passed the lowest point in the Netherlands (at -6.76m or -9m on the Garmin). One of our group, a sports doctor, knew the route very well and pointed out some of the local sights. Another, Henk, had particularly strong legs and did big turns into the wind. We chatted about rides, Randonneurs Nederland doesn’t have so many events but the country is not so big so it’s easier to get to them than in the UK.
The first control was in a café in a tiny hamlet near Delft, with excellent pastries and soup. I had the pastry. We’d done 84km in 3 hours. The four of us set off through Delft; the route missed the pretty centre and we had to fight double doses of road furniture and complex navigation. I was glad of the new Garmin, as a route sheet would have stretched to several pages. The sun came out and the wind mostly helped although it was stronger and more southerly than forecast. The one bit of the route that I had ridden before was from Benthuizen to Woerden but I was in for a surprise: tucked behind the windmill in Benthuizen was a tiny little old fashioned sweet shop, with two old ladies dressed up in traditional costume, selling old fashion sweets. The sports doctor knew about this but it’s only open a couple of times a week for a few hours.
The next section to Woerden was mostly crosswind, with little shelter. It was hard work, trying to ride in echelon but having to move out of formation a shared use road. ‘Dutch Mountains’ is what they refer to the wind and I entered the scenic moated town of Woerden with heavy legs. But the sports doctor was suffering more than I was and so I found myself doing turns on the front, mercifully with more of a tailwind. My legs were struggling with the lack of hills, so no opportunity to relieve the strain by coasting. But not as much as the sports doctor, whose legs were turning to jelly. So we ended up as a three. Henk and Rene were riding together but Henk’s GPS had packed up, so they were reliant on me, a novice GPS user to guide them round. But that had an advantage. They were going stronger than me and would have dropped me, but they had to look after me and in the last 50km I did very little on the front.
Which helped, because the wind was strengthening to a force 5 or even 6. We were now going through an area of woods and small canals, full of very large houses, then around a lake where we were fully exposed to the wind. The second stage was 82km, so I’d now done 150km on a pastry an Eat Natural bar and my energy drink. I was hanging on the wheels. It turned out that the second control was free so we ended up doing an extra 4km to a café that Henk and Rene knew, by which time we had completed 169km.
A cheese and ham toastie restored my spirits and we were off for the last 30km into the wind. Henk set off at 28kph and the other two of us hung on. Lakes, dykes, open fens, and motorway bridges passed. Then we were going off route. Henk and Rene were from Houten just next to Bunnik and these were their local routes. Checking the data afterwards my heart rate was solidly over 150 on this section.
The finish was at the café where we had started, but this time it was heaving with people who had been in the forest park. I had a beer with my two new friends. Then it was time to put the lights on and head back to Utrecht for the train to The Hague. It had been a great day out, fine weather, good company, and much faster than I would normally do a 200 at this time of year. There is more in common with long distance cyclists around the world than separates them through different nationalities. I’m now looking forward to the 300km in March.