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A long cycle weekend: Utrecht via Dordrecht and Willemstad, to Middelburg, back via Rotterdam to Utrecht.
This site was last updated Saturday 18th of November 2006
This was a trip we made in three and a half days, with a friend (Matt) who came over from England to cycle with us. We travelled from Utrecht to Dordrecht on the Friday evening, met up with Matt in Willemstad at lunch on the Saturday and headed towards Bergen op Zoom. Sunday we got past Middelburg and camped in a coastal campsite. Monday started with fresh rolls and coffee in the campsite cafeteria as the weather stayed damp.
Each day the wind changed direction so we ended up with a head wind every day. Matt who, at the time had the most experience with cycling holidays, suffered an injury to one of his ankles, which started feeling painful and slowed us all down some more.
In the end we parted ways on the Monday about 30km short of Rotterdam. Matt cycled back to the Europoort and took the ferry back to Hull a few days earlier than planned. He and his family had a long holiday planned in the US and he didn't want to risk not being fit for the holiday. We got as far as Rotterdam Centraal train station and called it a day. We had no more energy left to cycle back to Utrecht
In truth it was a bit ambitious to try to do this much cycling into continuous headwinds. Had I thought about it, we should have cut our losses and not gone via Middelburg. Still it was great to be able to cycle across the Delta works, through lovely old towns such as Bergen op Zoom and Middelburg, and to see the landscape unique to Zeeland.
Matt has not been cycling with us since (please come back we promise not to cycle so far)!
Click on the links below to view the galleries. Enjoy.
Friday and Saturday
Sunday
Monday
Trip stats - Distance 358km
Average Speed 17.1km/h
Max Speed 40.4km/h