A test ride, eastward from Oud-Ade and back.

12 July 2009 in Holland 2009, Netherlands, daily summary

My goal for Friday, June 26 was to figure out how far we could reasonably expect to ride in one day, and I achieved it — in abundance. Here’s the best approximation of the route I could come up with in Google Maps:

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It’s a little misleading, first because of the detour north around the Braassemermeer — there’s actually a ferry at Oude Wetering, which is where we saw this boat, named “Goed Idee” — good idea:

Anyway, after the ferry you can go straight across the polder:

before bending north to pass Leimuiden on the south. Then, unlike what the map suggests, we stayed on the south side of the Drecht all the way to Bilderdam, where we crossed to a tiny little path on the north side of the water:

which was much easier this time around than before, although we still opted to cross the Amstel at the locks to avoid the sheep path and have coffee and apple pie at a café across the water:

We next crossed the water at Vrouwenakker, site of our favorite farmstead ice cream vendor and visible pigs (we stopped for ice creams, natch, and found out that they sell some mighty fine-looking meat these days… tempting, but it was time to ride on).

There was a braderie (street fair) going on in Uithoorn, which slowed us down, so we couldn’t quite make our intended destination of Abcoude before our agreed-upon turn-around time of 1 PM. Just for old times’ sake, we took the sheep path on our way back, and ran into some other local fauna:

Now that’s a visible pig. And chickens, for that matter!

Now getting tired (and in my case, a little hangry), we powered back as best we could:

and managed to make it back to Oud-Ade by 4 PM, as promised. Conclusion: for this trip, we probably shouldn’t go too much more than 50 kilometers per day. Science rules! Armed with that information, and looking ahead to a whole semi-restful weekend of birthday party preparations and attendance, we were ready to make plans for the big trip.