Bicycle Scenes Riding Through the Northern Netherlands
On this part of the trip we work our way across the north of the country, taking in some new locations to us, and seeing how far the good bike infrastructure extends north, beyond the mainland, and between small towns and cities as we head towards Groningen...
If you’re new to the blog, welcome to Part 4 of our Netherlands trip back in April 2024. Previous blog posts include Part 1 in Den Bosch, Part 2 in Amsterdam and Amstelveen, and Part 3 in Alkmaar if you’re interested. This part see’s a number of one night stays as we travel from Alkmaar north to the island of Texel, then stops in Bolsward, Leeuwarden, and Doezum, before arriving in Groningen which will be the focus of the next post in a few weeks. To give you a better idea of the route we took for this part of the trip, here’s a quick map…
Texel Bound
We begin with a train ride from Alkmaar to Den Helder where you get the Ferry to Texel. Once in Den Welder, as we were riding on the road to the ferry from the train station - about a 5-10 minute ride - we were told by the police to get on the bike path that looked suspiciously like a sidewalk to me… But we did end up at an intersection with bicycle signal… Not all bike paths are red, it would have been useful here for sure… Boarding the ferry on one side as people exit on the other…
I was curious what a Dutch ferry would be like for people with bicycles relative to the experience here in BC. There are ramps to roll on and off along with foot passengers to an area just for bicycles, but there was nothing fancy, just an area for bikes. I figured there’d be a sea of bike racks or something across the entire deck, but we simply propped our bikes up against the wall in this relatively narrow area on the side of the ship…
The ferry isn’t free like those in Amsterdam, but it isn’t expensive either… just €2.50 for one return ticket for the 20 minute trip to Texel. It was a bit cheaper for us as we qualify for the pedestrian rate when the bike is folded - just like the NS trains. It would have been an extra €2.50 for a regular bike. We did keep it folded going there, but left it as is going back… There was plenty of room… In case you wondered, a car is €28.30-42.50. The Texel ferry service was founded by the citizens of the island and has operated since 1907 as a non-profit. Today the ownership is still in the hands of approximately 3,100 citizens of Texel and other users of the ferry service. It’s a decent size ferry as you can see below…
We land on Texel and there’s a direct route option inland to our hotel in Den Burg, but also one along the coast, which is obviously the way we went… Getting to the point below is the closest i’ve came to having to get off the 2-speed Brompton, but just made it… I don’t take a photo with every fietspad sign, but some seem like a good idea… Love the landscape here…
Cresting the hill to those sea views… I guess the bike network does extend off the mainland… Amazing…
A little further along, we find ourselves on what looks like a road that is falling into the sand dunes…
But a little further along, maybe it’s more sea defence than road collapsing into the sea… Unless this used to a four lane highway… Not sure asphalt would have been my first choice of material…
Turning inland toward our hotel, we get back onto the formal bike paths…
And as we get closer to town, we end up on an advisory bike lane with a gateway feature to slow traffic entering town…
For some reason I didn’t take any photos in Den Burg. It was a nice little town, but as soon as we had some food, we planned to cycle to the north end of the island, something that shouldn’t have taken that long if it wasn’t for that Dutch wind. The bike path north seemed pretty new…
Nice bend-out intersection… I wonder why they didn’t go with red for the bike paths here…
We hit a T at this location and had a decision to make, we could follow this guy and continue north… But the wind really was crazy strong… So we opted to turn left instead and headed toward the west coast…
We checked out a few of the beaches working our way back down the coast…
Heading back out to the main road from another beach…
The Dutch are masters of managing water… except at a couple of locations along this bike path…
But after taking the Brompton down some singletrack dirt paths off to the side, we were soon back on our way to one last beach…
The beach…
On our way back from the beach, we came across this floating - I think - fietspad… We had to go around this time though…
So to answer that question at the start, yep, the Dutch islands, or this one at least, also have great bike paths! And that was us pretty much done with Texel. In the morning, we headed straight for the ferry as we had a potentially big day ahead of us… On the way there, just some people riding through the fields…
This fietspad was just getting prepped for line painting, interestingly it doesn’t use the same surface treatment as the other new looking path from the night before… And a reminder that it might be called a fietspad, or bike path in English… but it’s really just a multi-use path…
These little mushroom like signs were all over the island… Should probably get a photo of one before we leave…
Crossing the Afsluitdijk to Bolsward
This leg would be super interesting with plans to cross the Afsluitdijk, essentially a 30 km long causeway that reclaimed part of the North Sea, turning it into a lake, and making travel across the north of the Netherlands much easier. Without much planning, we were just happy to see favourable winds that morning that would help us on the crossing. If the wind hand been opposite, we might have planned the trip differently. But before we get there, we start off back in Den Helder leaving town to the east on what I’d call a constrained bike path and sidewalk… Reminder to always throw a tree in-between every two on-street parking spaces… It adds green space without taking up space in the cross-section and keep the road narrow when there are no parked cars…
But before long we were on a wide bike path along the side of a busy road… No option the scenic route today, we were headed directly for the afsluitdijk…
Great… another 60 km/h road with advisory bike lane… I’ve said before I’m not a fan of these things especially on higher speed roads, but there wasn’t much traffic on this one so it was all good on this occasion…
Then what seemed like a road… But we had it to ourselves…
And then…
What I found out just that morning is that the Afsluitdijk, which protects much of The Netherlands from flooding is undergoing major reconstruction work, in part to raise it 2 metres, as a response to sea level rise and worsening storms. We wouldn’t be able to ride the full length and had to take the fietsbus for the first 2/3 of it…
The view from the fietsbus…
A lot of electricity being generated behind the Afsluitdijk… Especially today…
As we got off the bus the strong winds made our little Brompton’s feel like they had a motor attached…
Then we ended up on this narrow road with these textured edge pavers. The problem with this design is that we definitely didn’t want to ride on the pavers with our little wheels, but neither do most of the drivers, so most would squeeze us to avoid a little rumble, and only move onto the edges when passing other cars… As the road was quite busy, that was a lot of close passes…
Then we were glad to get back onto a bike path…
And then back on quiet farm roads…
We came through the small town - maybe village - of Exmorra that had just had new pavers installed from property line to property line. Looking back through Streetview it wasn’t that bad before, but looks like there’s now a wider sidewalk, narrower road, and those wooden posts are also new making it feel even narrower when driving and encouraging slower speeds…
Getting close to Bolsward, and another new bike path… In concrete this time…
Then, finally… after a ferry, bike ride, fietsbus, and another bike ride, we made it to Bolsward. The Canal even has bikes above it…
The main street is a fietsstraat… With no space for dedicated bicycle facilities, just make it a bicycle street…
A little further along…
And another angle of that main street…
Leeuwarden
This photo doesn’t really do justice to how bad the weather was to start our day… But the rain was very heavy and very sideways…
When it wasn’t raining… It sure looked like it was going to…
It was mostly quiet rural roads and bike paths all the way to Leeuwarden, but as we got to the edges of the City, the red bike paths started to appear… There’s even a Park & Bike…
Bicycle highway you could say… next to the car equivalent, it drops down and under the road in the far distance below…
Then climbing up from the underpass, we end up on a wide uni-directional protected bike lane with a lot of green space…
Then after sharing the road for a bit on a busy commercial street, we switch back over to bi-directional…
Where it looks like the afternoon rush hour is underway…
Getting into the centre… It’s a roundabout, it’s all red suggesting bicycle street, which it kind of is… But one approach coming toward camera is bicycle only…
More red streets… Cars allowed but i’d say people have priority through here…
There is a large central plaza that has a big hump over this canal…
It’s more just an area to pass through than linger though… plenty of cafe’s for that I guess…
There a lot of little pedestrian streets. I’m sure cars are allowed for servicing and whatnot, but mostly streets for people…
The light was amazing every time the clouds opened up for a second…
People getting around by bicycle…
The light was amazing here for a few seconds at a time… But never the same time when someone would come though on a bike… And with only an overnight stop here, wanted to keep moving around… There’s not many hills in The Netherlands, but you might have to get out of the saddle to cross the odd canal though…
More great little streets…
Cruising through the streets of Leeuwarden enjoying the sun…
Somewhere Between Leeuwarden and Groningen
We leave Leeuwarden on protected bike lanes, passing Woonerf’s accessed across continuous sidewalks and bike paths… Not sure if I’ve ever mentioned all the solar panels, but so many house have setups like this…
We pass through this little town of Burgum, a perfect place to stop for lunch while a longer than normal rain shower passed over us…
Then we continued on our way following the node network, which interestingly took us across protected bike lane and then looped us around and back to it later. It got me thinking about how the node network is designed and how nodes are placed. It’s not the shortest route necessarily, it’s not the most protected, we did enjoy the countryside and there was an Alpaca farm on route. Maybe it takes you by interesting things…
I think we have a contender for worst fietspad in The Netherlands here… Let me know if there’s a worse one… I had to double check the map to make sure this was the right way, but it was… It wasn’t terrible to be fair, and the narrow bike path was in better shape than the road…
This might even qualify as a gravel ride if it keeps going…
I think this is entering Surhuisterveen, a narrow cross-section but managing to fit in a sidewalk, bike path and even some green space…
This definitely is Surhuisterveen, the last town before our destination so we stopped to grab an early dinner and some snacks before our farm house destination…
We’d done well to avoid the rain showers on this leg, but five minutes before arriving at our destination the weather got us, with decently sized hail too. We stayed at a farm that like several we saw on our travels, has added a secondary building with vacation rentals to supplement their income. We ran for shelter in the doorway and the farmer came out to greet us, and with his poor English and our non-existent Dutch he seemed to understand we were staying there and not just sheltering…
Groningen Bound
Leaving the farm in the morning we were soon back on a bike path on route to Groningen. It featured big bend-out intersection with different paving between the road and crossride. It appeared more like something we’d build in North America, not a quick build, but retrofit of sorts, maintaining drainage to existing curbs. I could look as far back as 2009, but there was a similar facility with different curbs then, they just changed the buffers it seems…
This location had me questioning that though as the bike path seems so much lower than the road. Note the bus stop with raised bike path which helps indicate priority for people boarding the bus, but not only that makes boarding the bus accessible, which it wasn’t always…
Just another van partially blocking the bike path and entirely blocking the sidewalk…
The bike path switches sides at this point, and I liked how the treated this. The chicane in the road slows drivers down and creates a median for people on bikes to cross in two stages if they needed to. While we had to yield to traffic, there wasn’t much, and it was an easy transfer across to the other side…
These kids were wheelying along the road but I was too slow. Interesting semi rural bike path/sidewalk arrangement…
Further along, a slightly different transition than the one above, this time between on-street painted lanes and an off-street bi-directional bike path. It’s pretty simple I guess. There’s no real guidance on priorities, but it’s kind of obvious that you’d want to be sure of a gap, before crossing the way we were going, or joining the way this kid is. I might have let this truck go first…
The Dutch aren’t the only people to do this… It just makes sense to reduce the amount of cut, but people on bicycles don’t need the same clearance as trucks, so let’s keep their bike path flat under the bridge and just lower the road…
Heading from obscurity onto the F355, indicating we’re getting close to Groningen…
The fast cycle route into town from the west. We actually rode this back in 2022, and there’s some photos from it in Fietspad, this is the point where I knew where we were…
Nearly there, just need to wait for this bridge to go up and down…
We were staying at the hotel just past the tables on the right, great hotel and great location…
The main drag into town, cars are allowed, but this is a bicycle street in function if not name…
We arrived on Kings Night, the night before Kings Day, where the main square - which was a parking lot way back - became a concert venue for a couple of nights…
We spent quite a few days in Groningen, so check back for the next post for more photos from around the city…