Amsterdam · Veluwe Forest and IJssel River
A 215 km loop from Naarden fortress
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Why this ride
Forest lanes and river dikes without city clutter. A 215 km loop that starts and ends near Naarden, about 3 h 42 of riding. The stops in between: Veluwe forest roads, Deventer river stop and IJssel dike roads. Back roads rather than main roads, where the map allows.
Roadbook
- Naarden fortress
sight
Seen from the air, Naarden is a star. The little town in the Gooi, thirty minutes east of Amsterdam, is wrapped in a perfectly geometric twelve-pointed fortress, with ramparts, moats and bastions arranged in a double ring that was one of the most advanced designs in seventeenth-century Europe. It was built to defend the approach to Amsterdam and later became part of the Dutch Water Line, the system of flooding fields that protected the heart of the country. Inside the walls, the houses sit in neat little streets, and the old town is quiet and well preserved.
The history here includes a dark moment. In 1572, during the Eighty Years' War, Spanish troops entered Naarden after the town surrendered, and the people were massacred, a story still told in the town. The philosopher and educator Jan Amos Comenius, a Czech refugee who spent his last years in Amsterdam, is buried in Naarden, and a small mausoleum commemorates him. The Grote Kerk is the setting each spring for a traditional performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion, which attracts a devoted audience.
For the rider, Naarden is a pleasant place for a halt rather than a place to ride. The streets within the walls are narrow and cobbled, and parking in the middle is limited, so leave the bike outside the ramparts and walk in. The ramparts themselves make a nice stroll, with water and grass on both sides, and the walls are lovely in autumn. Roads in the surrounding Gooi are flat, quick and busy with commuters, cyclists and trams, so you need to take care at junctions and roundabouts. Speed cameras are common, and fines are heavy. On the way east, the roads climb gently toward the Veluwe woodland, and the landscape changes into heath and forest.
Bussum, just over two kilometres away, is a town of thirty thousand and has fuel, supermarkets and a good choice of cafes. Within the old walls there are small restaurants and bakeries around the market square. Weekdays are quiet, and weekends bring tourists.
- Veluwe forest roads
scenic
The forest here is the Veluwe, the biggest unbroken stretch of woodland, heath and drifting sand in the Netherlands, a raised plateau in the province of Gelderland that was pushed up by glaciers in the last ice age. It is odd to think of the flat country having a ridge at all, but the Veluwe rises to a hundred metres or so in places, and the roads wind between pines, oaks and beeches in a way that feels almost un-Dutch. The nearest villages are Otterlo, Harskamp and Wekerom, small and tidy, and the town of Ede is the bigger place with fuel and supermarkets about twelve kilometres away.
Nearby is the Hoge Veluwe National Park, which charges at the gate and is known for its free white bicycles. It contains the Kröller-Müller Museum, with one of the finest collections of Van Gogh's work in the world, and a sculpture garden in the woods. The museum was created by Helene Kröller-Müller and her husband Anton, who bought the surrounding land for hunting and then opened it to the public. Riders can park at the entrance and walk or cycle in, which is a pleasant change of pace.
The forest roads around the park are quiet and smooth, with a mixture of brick and asphalt, and cycle paths running alongside. Speed limits here are strictly enforced, and eighty kilometres per hour is the usual limit on roads outside built-up areas, with some sections lower. Cameras are common, and the police take noise seriously, so ride calmly and enjoy the forest rather than racing through it. The bends are gentle and long, not tight, and the pleasure is more about atmosphere than technical riding: golden light through pine trunks, heather in bloom in late summer, and a smell of resin and warm sand.
Wildlife is plentiful. Red deer, roe deer, wild boar and the mouflon, a wild sheep, live in the woods, and they cross roads at dawn and dusk. In autumn, the rutting season brings the bellowing of stags across the heath, which is quite a sound in the early light. Sand drifts, among the largest areas of inland dunes in western Europe, appear in clearings, and can blow onto the road in dry weather.
There is little in the way of services in the forest, so fill up and eat before you go. Otterlo has a few cafes and bakeries, and the museum has a cafe too.
- Deventer river stop
food
Deventer is one of the oldest towns in the Netherlands, a Hanseatic city on the IJssel river that grew rich on trade in the Middle Ages and has kept its look. The river runs broad and slow beside the old harbour, with brick warehouses, churches and the long quay lined with cafes, and the centre is full of narrow lanes, towers and crooked gables. A town of nearly a hundred thousand people, it is large enough to have everything a rider needs, with fuel stations on the main roads and a good choice of places to eat in the old town.
The best-known local food is Deventer koek, a spiced gingerbread cake whose recipe goes back centuries, and which you can buy in bakeries and the old shops by the Brink, the main square. The square is also home to the Waag, the weigh house, a handsome medieval building with a tall tower, and the Bergkerk and Lebuinus church keep watch over the roofs. In the late Middle Ages, the town was a centre of learning and a home to the Modern Devotion movement, started by Geert Grote, whose ideas of simple, personal religion influenced writers like Thomas à Kempis. The town's old library, the Athenaeum, is among the oldest in the country.
On a motorbike, the town is better as a place to stop than to ride through. The centre has cobbles and one-way streets, and tram-like crowds of cyclists, so go slowly, and park on the edge or by the river. Out on the IJssel, the roads along the embankments are the thing, flat and quiet, with water and willows on one side and farmland on the other. The surface is mostly smooth asphalt, with sudden bends where the road follows the river.
The IJssel rises when meltwater and rain push the Rhine up, and the quay walls show it, with old flood marks and steps that lead straight into the water. Walking along them on a summer evening, you see why people love the place.
Come in late spring or early autumn for the best light, and a stop at one of the riverside terraces is a good way to end the day. Food ranges from pancakes to modern kitchens, and the gingerbread makes a fine souvenir.
- IJssel dike roads
photo
Along the IJssel between Deventer and Zwolle, the road runs on top of the dike, with the river on one side and the low green polder on the other, and the whole of the Dutch relationship with water is laid out in a few kilometres. The IJssel is a branch of the Rhine that splits off near Arnhem and carries a good share of its water north to the old Zuiderzee, now the IJsselmeer. Along it lie wide floodplains, called uiterwaarden, where cattle graze in summer and where the river spreads out when it rises.
Riding on the dike is an easy business. The road is narrow, usually with a low speed limit, and it follows the river in long gentle curves, with the occasional sharp bend at a farm or a ferry landing. The surface can be uneven, and farm traffic, cyclists and walkers share the space, so take it calmly. From the top of the dike, you see over the floodplain to the river, with barges slowly passing, and on the other side to farms and red-roofed houses sheltering behind the embankment. On a clear day, the sky seems to take up three quarters of the view. Wind can be strong along the open stretches, and it is worth remembering that a headwind in the Netherlands feels like a personal insult.
The villages nearby, Olst and Epe among them, are small, and they have what you need. Olst has a ferry crossing, and Epe, in the woods on the edge of the Veluwe, is a larger town with fuel and supermarkets about six kilometres away. The river towns of Hattem and Zwolle, further north, are old fortified places, with city gates and canals, and Zwolle has the Hanseatic charm of its neighbour Deventer.
The history is the history of defence. For centuries, the people living along the river have fought the water, and the dikes are the result, each one higher than the last. In the winter of 1995, high water in the Rhine led to the evacuation of a quarter of a million people in the Netherlands, and the dikes held. Since then, the government has widened parts of the floodplain to give the river more room.
Spring and autumn are the best times to ride here, with mist on the water in the early morning and flocks of geese overhead. In summer, the dike gets crowded with cyclists, so choose a weekday.
- Back to Naarden fortress
finish
Back at Naarden fortress. That is the ride.