CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
379 km from Middenbeemster to Middenbeemster, about 6 h 32 of riding. It goes by way of Fort near Heemstede, Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk, Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout and Béguinage de Hoogstraten. It crosses from Netherlands into Belgium - carry ID and check the toll rules. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 41 km this is Dutch Flower Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
In 1612 a lake north of Amsterdam disappeared. Wealthy merchants, flush with money from the Dutch trading boom, financed the draining of the Beemster, and the engineer Jan Adriaenszoon Leeghwater used dozens of windmills to pump the water out into a ring canal. What remained was a polder several metres below sea level, laid out in a perfectly regular grid of roads, canals and fields based on Renaissance ideas of order and proportion. The Beemster was inscribed by UNESCO in 1999 as a masterpiece of creative planning, and from above it looks like a ruled sheet of paper.
Read the complete Droogmakerij de Beemster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Droogmakerij de Beemster is where the day begins. Next is Fort near Heemstede.
Between Haarlem and the bulb fields of the Dutch coast, near the town of Heemstede and the hamlet of De Glip, lies a squat, grassy fort surrounded by a moat. This is the Fort near Heemstede, built around the turn of the twentieth century as part of the Defence Line of Amsterdam, a ring of forts, dykes and flooding zones around the city, and now part of the UNESCO-listed Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Read the complete Fort near Heemstede write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Fort near Heemstede comes up about 41 km into the recorded legs. Next is Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk.
The Vliet, a calm green waterway running between Leiden and The Hague, looks like any other Dutch canal, lined with reeds, cyclists and the occasional houseboat. But it follows, more or less, the route of one of the oldest canals in Western Europe. In about AD 47, the Roman general Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo ordered his soldiers to dig a canal linking the Rhine and the Meuse estuaries, so that boats could move supplies along the coast without risking the North Sea. The historian Tacitus says Corbulo did it partly to keep his troops busy. Traces of the Fossa Corbulonis have been found here at Vlietwijk, near Voorschoten, and the site is part of the Lower German Limes World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2021.
Read the complete Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 77 km into the recorded legs you reach Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk. Next is Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout.
Nineteen windmills stand in two rows along the canals at Kinderdijk, their sails turning slowly against the wide Dutch sky, and it is one of the most iconic sights in the Netherlands. They were built in the eighteenth century to pump water out of the Alblasserwaard, a low-lying polder between the rivers Lek and Noord, which would otherwise be flooded. Each mill lifted water from a lower canal to a higher one, and from there it was let out into the river. Over time steam, diesel and electric pumping stations took over the job, and the most recent ones still keep the polder dry today. The mill network was listed by UNESCO in 1997.
Read the complete Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout, about halfway. Next is Béguinage de Hoogstraten.
A béguinage is one of the most peaceful places in the Low Countries: a walled enclosure of small houses around a green courtyard and a church, built in the Middle Ages for béguines, women who lived a religious life of prayer and work without taking permanent vows. They could own property, leave if they wished and support themselves by weaving, teaching or nursing, which made the béguinages a unique form of female independence in medieval Europe. The béguinage at Hoogstraten, in the north of Antwerp province near the Dutch border, is one of thirteen Flemish béguinages on the World Heritage list, and it is a quiet, charming place, with whitewashed houses, a baroque church and a garden where time seems to slow.
Read the complete Béguinage de Hoogstraten write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Béguinage de Hoogstraten sits at 190 km, about halfway. Next is back through Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout comes up about 263 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 303 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk. Next is back through Fort near Heemstede.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort near Heemstede write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Fort near Heemstede, late in the day. Next is Droogmakerij de Beemster.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Droogmakerij de Beemster write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 379 km.
Droogmakerij de Beemster → Fort near Heemstede is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort near Heemstede → Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk → Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout → Béguinage de Hoogstraten is 73 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Béguinage de Hoogstraten → back through Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout is 73 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout → back through Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Corbulo's canal | Vlietwijk → back through Fort near Heemstede is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fort near Heemstede → Droogmakerij de Beemster is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.