Cycling Tour North-Netherlands 1996

Bas van Oudheusden and Maria Salomons
Delft, The Netherlands

Travel report

  • Introduction

    • Although the direct reasons for staying close near home and making a last-minute planning were of a personal nature - why not make an extended trip in your own home country, and experience areas you heard about in school, in a way similar as for the foreign regions encountered on our previous holiday cycling tours abroad? We settled for a daily average of about 60 km, but cycling in the Netherlands is very easy, so if you want to cycle longer hours, skip any sight-seeing and keep up a higher average speed you'd have no problem doing over 100 km per day or more. It's just up to you to find your personal balance between effort and relaxing.
    We planned a relaxed 10 days' tour of the northern part of the country. Commonly 'the North' is regarded to denote the provinces of Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe. For most 'Westerners', though, the north starts already beyond the town of Zwolle (capital of Overijssel), and it is from there that our tour started and ended. A further reason to start at Zwolle was that it's conveniently located, with direct train access from most major cities in the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam and Eindhoven, for example). =>Train info

  • Accommodation

    • Contrary to all our previous tours, this would be a completely planned tour with 'fixed' pre-arranged accomodation, rather than 'camping as we went'. Initially, the route was based on camping hut accomodation, with the backup possibility of budget hotels/guest houses. However, when carrying out the actual reservations, less than a week before the start of our travel, many camping huts turned out to be booked, so we settled for hotel rooms for the entire trip. Notwithstanding the short notice and the holiday period (mid-July = high season) the latter provided no problem whatsoever. Probably, the choice of less-touristic locations was partly responsible for this - I don't expect this would work for major touristic destinations in the West as well.
    For locations, telephone numbers and prices of the hotels I used the internet site of the Dutch Tourist Board. More extensive listings may be available from the local Tourist Offices, which also offer a national booking service for a selection of hotels.
    Average room prices we payed were NLG 80-90 (approximately US$ 50) for a double room with shared facilities.
    Even for this short 10-day period we experienced a temperature range between 15 and 28 degrees C, with weather varying between heavily overcast and sunny. Wind was usually in the 3 to 5 Beaufort range, and appeared to be predominantly head wind, wherever we went. We didn't have any rain, but don't count on that being generally the case!

    Some assorted touristic highlights:

  • Towns: Zwolle, Sloten, Bolsward, Harlingen, Franeker, Coevorden.
  • Landscape: Terschelling.
  • Field and town fortresses: Bourtange, Oudeschans, Coevorden.
  • Scientific & industrial interests: Eisinga Planetarium, Gasselternijveen shipping museum.

    Tour description:

    De Kop van Overijssel

    Leaving from Zwolle railway station we quickly found ourselves cycling a peaceful route following the river dyke along the Zwartewater to the small Hanseatic town of Hasselt. Further north the province of Overijssel displays an extensive region of lakes and wetlands ('Wieden' and 'Weerribben'), and although this is evidently best experienced by boat, the region makes nice cycling as well. We made a small detour over Blokzijl, following the dyke which once protected against the 'Zuiderzee', but now provides a distant view of the reclaimed land of the 'Noordoostpolder'. Giethoorn was our first hotel stop, and although it is allegedly a very touristic place claiming itself as the 'Venice of the North', day time tourism had evidently quieted down. Still, competition among boat rental agencies appeared quite fierce, and as we cycled out the following morning we were immediately approached as to whether we wouldn't want to rent a boat (instead of cycling? no way!).

    Friesland

    The province of Friesland offers wide vistas of flat polder lands, but in contrast to the west of the Netherlands no large urbanisation has taken place, making it in general a fine region for relaxed cycling tours. It is very much a province of land and water, and especially the large lakes of the south-western region offer very attractive opportunities for sailing and other water sports. Take a view of one of the many locations where road and water ways cross, and you see bridges continously being opened and closed. In the small historic town of Sloten we encountered the first of the 'Elf steden': Friesland has eleven cities with historic town rights and the 200 km 'Elfstedentocht' route connecting all towns forms a classic skating tour (in severe winters only - nowadays with nationwide TV coverage). Alternative routes are available for cycling (230 km), boating or wind-surfing. We didn't have in mind to do exactly that, but would pass seven of the towns in the following days, including the five we had missed out on a previous tour. However, only a slight modification of our present tour would have been required to include the four we gave a miss this time. Passing through IJlst, Sneek and Bolsward - near to which is the homeground of the founding father of the mennonites - we came to the harbour town of Harlingen, where we stayed at a cosy hotel at the Noorderhaven, in direct view of the historic town hall.
    For a single day we left our bicycles unused, and took the ferry for a day trip to the island of Terschelling, for which you have the choice between the car ferry (approx. 1:45 h) or the high speed catamaran which does it in about half the time. At approximately US$ 25 you get a day return ticket which gives you access to the 9 AM catamaran crossing without having to pay the surplus that's normally required for it. On Terschelling there's plenty opportunity to rent bikes, but we decided on an extended walk through the dunes instead, which provided great views of the island and the village with its classic square lighthouse, the 'Brandaris'.
    Our first stop on next day's cycling tour was the town of Franeker, location of one of the earliest universities in the Netherlands (second only to Leiden) until it was closed during the Napoleontic times. Famous attraction in Franeker is its 'Planetarium', a late 18th century clockwork model of the solar system made by the amateur astronomer Eisinga in the ceiling of his own living room - still in operation. Not much serious cycling going on that day, it appeared, with a further stop and tour of the castle 'Poptaslot' and a short tour of the Frisian capital of Leeuwarden. We slightly made up for that the afternoon and the following day, on which we left the province near the slightly wooded region of Bakkeveen.

    Drenthe

    Most of the former waste grounds that made up much of the province of Drenthe have been cultivated and turned into small scale forests or agricultural lands. With only very little urbanisation and a large amount of 'natural environment' (i.e. to Dutch standards) the province is a very popular destination for recreation nationally, and boasts of a large network of cycle paths.
    The centre region of the province is formed by a slightly elevated sandy plateau, at the east culminating in the glacial ridge of the 'Hondsrug', which provides some of the earliest evidences of human settlement in the Netherlands. The province is especially known for its large amount of 'hunebedden', prehistoric stone burial monuments (dolmen). These can easily be located by means of the ANWB road maps - and we passed several of them, including one of quite significant size along the cycle path through the woods between Zuidlaren and Anloo.
    Much of the rest of the province, and large neighbouring parts of the provinces of Friesland and Groningen as well, used to consist of extensive peat marshes which made the region extremely inaccessible. Only small settlements developed in the sandy regions, until in early modern times the marshes were drained and exploited for the peat that was in high demand as fuel in the developing cities elsewhere in the country.
    We entered the province along a road which in previous times had been one of the few access roads through a region of marshes, as was evidenced by the strategic location of a (restored) field fortress dating from the late 16-th century, near the village of Een.
    The typical construction of the villages in Drenthe is characterised by the presence of a 'brink' (village common), often lined with age-old trees, while several have old Romanesque village churches (Vries, Anloo).
    The eastern border between Drenthe and Groningen was established as a straight line through the marshes. The town of Groningen undertook the development of the regions in their possession by digging a straight canal following this border, for access and the transport of the peat. Significant settlements developed along this canal (Stadskanaal), later followed by some industrialisation. Also for the later large-scale exploitation of the marshes on the Drenthe side of the border, this canal was used as a central transportation artery. The shipping trade of peat resulted in the area becoming an important region of shipbuilding, and the construction of small river boats developed later into a flourishing coastwise trade - at the beginning of this century this area formed one of the largest home bases for merchant ships in the Netherlands. This is a fact of which most people in the Netherlands are ignorant, as nothing much of this remains today, but the history can be evoked at the small shipping museum at Gasselternijveen.

    Groningen

    The south-eastern part of the province of Groningen bordering on Germany is called Westerwolde, a very rural area of secluded villages and farm lands. From Stadskanaal we crossed this region, towards the former field-fortress town of Bourtanghe (photo left), which controlled the single access road through the peat marshes in this border region. The town was constructed at the end of the 16-th century in the course of the 80-years' War. It possesses a regular pentagonal shape with a symmetric radial street pattern, while further outer fortifications were added in later centuries. In recent decades the fortifications have been reconstructed to a large extent, giving a very nice experience of a 18-th century military border town. Further north lie other former border fortress towns of Oudeschans and Nieuweschans, but these have not been reconstructed, and only some remains of the old fortifications can be seen.
    Travelling south along the course of the river Ruiten-Aa we arrived at Ter Apel in the extreme south of the province of Groningen, which possesses a fine monastery (now museum).

    The route back to Zwolle

    From Ter Apel we returned into Drenthe and its south-western areas of reclaimed peat marshes, cycling again along straight canals used formerly for transport, to the regional centre Emmen. In the centre of town there is a nice zoo ('Noorderdierenpark') , which is a fairly modern one, and famous for its butterfly garden. That same day we ended in Coevorden, a sizeable former border fortress town at an important access route from the east. The town has a fine castle in the centre of town (allegedly the only medieval castle in Drenthe) while the central market square and radial street plan still evidence the city's former radially symmetrical, heptagonal fortress structure. The old Arsenal buildings are in use as town museum and public library.
    Next day we cycled back to Zwolle, following roughly the course of the Vecht river, and through a semi-forested region, which turned out to be highly popular on this very sunny day.
    Some suggestions for tour extensions and/or modifications (partially based on experiences from previous tours):

    Route description North-Netherlands tour - July 1996

    
    date                                            distance    total

sa  13-7    Zwolle - Giethoorn                          50.0     50.0
su  14-7    Giethoorn - Koudum                          67.0    117.0
mo  15-7    Koudum - Harlingen                          58.4    175.4
tu  16-7     excursion: Terschelling                       -    175.4
we  17-7    Harlingen - Bergum                          53.0    228.4
th  18-7    Bergum - Zuidlaren                          68.9    297.3
fr  19-7    Zuidlaren - Bourtange                       56.0    353.3
sa  20-7     excursion: Oudeschans                      54.3    407.6
su  21-7    Bourtange - Coevorden                       73.6    481.2
mo  22-7    Coevorden - Zwolle                          67.8    549.0

      10    total                                       54.9    549.0
       9    cycling days                                61.0    549.0
       8    tour                                        61.8    494.7
    Last modified: 21-08-96