Using Stichting Vrienden op de Fiets

[nikki]

Is anyone here a veteran of the Stichting Vrienden op de Fiets system?

How much in advance should I make contact with potential hosts?

[Wowbagger]

I'm assuming from the deafening silence that you had no luck, Nikki. Did you end up getting involved?

[Auntie Helen]

Hi Nikki,

I use this regularly. In two weekends’ time we are having two nights at one place.

My experience is, book as early as possible and expect about a 10% success rate. In other words, we usually have to contact 5-10 places before getting a positive result. We are limited in our choices because of Velomobile parking issues though. We also always go for a ‘garden house’ So you are in a separate building usually and have privacy and don’t have to share a bathroom. Also means lots of space for velomobiles as you don’t have a garden house without a garden.

I find emailing can take a while, sometimes I phone through Skype as this can be more direct. Emails take several days to get a response sometimes.

But overall we think it’s great and have stayed in some lovely places for 45€ for the two of us, including breakfast.

[jiberjaber]

Whilst I did join a year or so back, I didn't get round to using it.  It's been used to good success by some of the Fridays when on tour.  It appears a great way to immerse in the local culture and find out how it all works.... I've usually used booking.com as last thing I've wanted is too much human contact!

mmmmartin OTP uses it often, I think he might be out of the country at the moment, but you could drop him a PM to get his attention...

[nikki]

For that trip (Southampton > Dover > Dunkirk > Den Haag > Hoek van Holland > Harwich > Sunny Milton Keynes) I used airbnb for the UK trip out, a VodF in Belgium, then a warmshowers and another VodF in the Netherlands. On the return UK leg I stayed at the house of a person off the internet, and then two more warmshowers hosts.

I had a couple of failed attempts at booking VodF places, and the well-seasoned Dutch warmshowers hosts ripping the piss out of me for booking with them a month in advance 

The Belgian VodF place was a self-contained basement set-up in the house of a couple of architects. She cooked a lovely meal for me and chatted for a while, but also had well defined boundaries for space and time.

The one in Burgh Haamstede was basically a commercial BnB place, so other than checking in I didn't really have any contact with the proprietors.

For my trip last year I opted for Stichting Natuurkampeerterreinen and being more independent with timings and food. A strategic warmshowers when I overnighted in a big city.

VodF felt like good value, and not too distanced a way to engage with a new country. Ditto for warmshowers.
Natuurkampeerterreinen usually involved long chats with the owners too.