Holland / Netherlands

you're not giving him the answers he's looking for skive !!

haha.

Any advice on cycle friendly hostels/cheap hotels?

Vita nova is a boat hotel that I've stayed on a coupl of times. Cheap, breakfast included, wifi, bike friendly. It's on hostelworld

Any advice on cycle friendly hostels/cheap hotels?

If you want it affordable and friendly, check out bed and breakfast.
http://www.bedandbreakfast.nl/bed-and-breakfast-nl/

found the route i took:

http://www.bikemap.net/route/345506#lat=51.707007770369&lng=3.679625&zoom=8&maptype=ts_terrain

Skive, you got any more details about this trip? I'm looking at cycling across Europe this summer. The plan is to probably do what you've done, then visit mates in Utrecht then other mates in Nuremberg before getting on the Danube to the Black Sea! I can not wait. How long did you take to do this? Were you camping? Any tips for the route?
Cheers

Any advice on cycle friendly hostels/cheap hotels?

You can try the Student Hotel. Decent and cheapish...

I have two full days at the end of July to ride from the ferry port at Hoek to Kerkrade in the south. I've started thinking about the route, but so far just have a 250km straight line heading south east. I could do that in a day at a push, but I'd rather take my time and see a few sights along the way. Problem is, I don't know very much about Holland, apart from that Amsterdam is unlikely to be very lively first thing on a Thursday morning...

I started making a list of things which I thought were "must sees":

1. Windmills
   
2. Fields with flowers in
   
   

Got a bit stuck after that! Any suggestions on things to see, routes to take and / or places to stay?

nope your right i heard holland doesn't open till at least midday on a thurs
they do have a countryside though which should be quite nice before midday

try the canal south from amsterdam to utrecht ... even down as far as the rhine
nice flat traffic free cycling

you pass within 40km or so of leuven ( left on the map of kerkrade ) the home of stella artois ... maybe a pilgrimage to the brewery there

Like the canal idea.

Beer could also feature.

Any opinion on Gelderland? Looks like the greenest bit on the map.

Gelderland is great to ride.
But if you don't know the routes, it can be boring, too.
But other parts of the country can also be fantastic.

The problem is that Gelderland is not exactly on the line Rotterdam - Kerkrade.

Windmills: Kinderdijk. Very tourist-like and for Asians, not for me. I don't know if that is a must see. But if you want: yes, there are some windmills and on your route.

Flowers: then you must come now and not even 2 weeks later. For the bulbs, season is already over. End of july there no single flower left. So, forget it.

But if I may recommend something: look for "knooppuntenroutes".
You'll ride from knot to knot, from junction to junction.
On every junction, all numbered, there is a map of the area and you can choose for the next part of the route. You have thousands of options.
All you have to do is follow the numbers. Usually smaller, more quiet roads and paths.
You can even plan it online if you like.

http://www.nederlandfietsland.nl/knooppuntroutes/overzicht-knooppuntroutes

But if you like to ride in Gelderland, I can guide you around for a day (maybe).

On the bike, the long-distance routes (LF-routes) and new fast routes (S-routes) are good - wide and smooth for faster cycling. The node routes are twisty, nice for an amble.

Off the bike, I recommend the newly opened Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh in Amsterdam, and the Anthropological Museum in Leiden. Unfortunately you have to pay for museums here - about €10-15, but they are worth it.

attaque84:

The windmills:

Located at Kinderdijk (near Rotterdam, easy to do on a bicycle)

Fields with flowers:

Usually (depends on the weather) from the end of March until the first week of May, depending on what kind of flowers. You can find most fields between Leiden and Den Helder
You can also, if you like the flowers fields, go to castle keukenhof in Lisse. It opends half march and closes in the middle of May.

Red light district:

You can visit the Red light district in Amsterdam all year. It's in the middle of the town but there is a big chance you will lose your wallet.

Coffeeshops:

Located in all big towns but best shops are in Amsterdam.

You can also visit the centre of Amsterdam for old architecture (see Red light district).
If you wish to see new architecture you should visit Rotterdam, that town was bombed in the second world war and has been rebuild with new buildings. It's the higest town in the country, the only town with a skyline and has some cool places to go out.

It's bicycle friendly and pretty easy to speed up. Nice flat proper asphalt everywhere and a lot less crowded then Amsterdam.

If you want to ride your bicycle in the "hills" and have a good time riding around small villages, go to the south of limburg.

Those are the only tourist attractions in know in my own country.

Not quite sure where your south eastern trajectory is taking you to/from, but if you happen to be near Arnhem, I can't recommend enough the national park there that is home to the Kröller Müller (sp?) museum, fantastic paintings & sculpture, in the middle of a stunning part-forested park. Check out the sculpure garden.

If you will be anywhere near Laage Vursche (spelling? Might have taken some liberties with the vowels there) I would highly recommend it. Mini golf and pancake capital of the Netherlands!

Thanks all, lots more info for the planning process!

Not quite sure where your south eastern trajectory is taking you to/from, but if you happen to be near Arnhem, I can't recommend enough the national park there that is home to the Kröller Müller (sp?) museum, fantastic paintings & sculpture, in the middle of a stunning part-forested park. Check out the sculpure garden.

Hoge Veluwe

http://www.hogeveluwe.nl/en/14

Park Hoge Veluwe is nice for visiting the Museum (free white bikes in the park) and for cruising around a bit, but I wouldn't recommend it with a racing bike.
But outside the park there are many cycling opportunities, incl. the Apeldoorn velodrome and several marked MTB tours.

I heard that was good. Plus going to or from involves a ride through nice forested countryside.

Also, how bad are the roads in the park? I'm from Kent, so loose gravel is one of the two "normal" road surfaces, the other being cow shit.

OK, I've got started with route planning. So far my approach has been to list where I want to go in the fiets route planner: http://www.nederlandfietsland.nl/fietsrouteplanner then exporting the route it creates / import into ridewithgps to do the fine tuning: i.e. trying to avoid doing a zillion left turns every km and trying to spend less time in the suburbs and more in the countryside.

One thing I'm keen to understand: how do I choose routes where I'll be able to make good progress? Are the LF-routes designed to be quicker to navigate? Some of them seem to take pretty tortuous routes through towns. Atticus mentioned s-routes but I'm struggling to find any info on those.
[URL="http://www.nederlandfietsland.nl/fietsrouteplanner"][/URL]

^ My experience was the signposting for Knooppunt routes tended to get very patchy in cities, but was very quick, convenient, direct and scenic once you got into the countryside. I took a GPS unit but ended up barely using it. Just bought the local maps and wrote down the numbers of the nodes we wanted to follow the next day, each evening. Foolproof!

I never tried the knooppunten routes. I find the ANWB signs a lot easier.

The ANWB placed signs all over the country for cyclists.

Here you can see the best route to drive on. They take a short route but also make sure it's decent route to cycle on. If it's a little bit longer to ride on a much better route, they use the best one.

This sign shows that you can choose for Amsterdam 10 kilometers or Amsterdam 7 kilometers through a "forest".

Rotterdam isn't mentioned but then you can follow other towns on the route to it.

You only need a simple map of the country and you can cycle everywhere following these signs. No need to use a GPS device or a knooppunt system to guide you. I use this all the time. The only thing it doesn't help you with is finding a hotel.

The knooppunt routes might be a bit more tourist.

Cool, thanks.

I think my routes will be a total hodge-podge of recommended cycle lanes and nice looking roads I've scoped out in streetview.

One thing I've noticed: there's a number of very small ferry crossings along the way. Assume you just roll up and they'll ferry you across for 50c or something? I.e. no long waits?

^ Ferries vary. Some of them seem to be in perpetual operation (there's one north of Amsterdam like this, and in the city itself), some are every 90 minutes or so, some stop at 5:30pm in the evening, some only operate during summer season. We were relatively lucky, but my advice would be to do a bit of research. When are you going? I can take a look at our itinerary and see if I can remember any of the ones we used.

Mostly free/cheap.

OK, well here is Day 2 (of 2)'s route:
http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2711112

Crossings at Kms 108 & 116. I could just re-route to avoid, I suppose. There may be some needed on Day 1.

EDIT: ooh, that's clever!