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: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 486 km round trip from Alblasserdam - roughly 7 h 19 in the saddle. The stops in between: Woerden-Centrum, Fort Werk IV, Droogmakerij de Beemster and Schokland and Surroundings. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
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 is where the day begins. Next is Woerden-Centrum.
Woerden is a small Dutch town on the Oude Rijn, the old Rhine, halfway between Utrecht and Leiden, in the middle of the Green Heart of Holland, a landscape of polders, meadows, ditches and cows. Its centre is a compact old town ringed by canals, with a castle, a big church and a windmill on the old ramparts. The Romans were here too: Woerden lies on the line of the Lower German Limes, and the remains of a Roman fort lie beneath the town centre.
Read the complete Woerden-Centrum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Woerden-Centrum comes up about 42 km into the recorded legs. Next is Fort Werk IV.
The Gooi, the area east of Amsterdam around Bussum, Naarden and Hilversum, is one of the few places in the western Netherlands with hills, if you can call low sandy ridges hills. It is a region of heathland, woods and wealthy villages. On the edge of Bussum, close to the fortified town of Naarden, stands Fort Werk IV, a small fortification that was part of the New Dutch Waterline and the Defence Line of Amsterdam, and is now part of the UNESCO-listed Dutch Water Defence Lines.
Read the complete Fort Werk IV write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 93 km into the recorded legs you reach Fort Werk IV. Next is Droogmakerij de Beemster.
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, about halfway. Next is Schokland and Surroundings.
Schokland was once an island in the Zuiderzee, a long, narrow strip of peat and clay surrounded by an inland sea that constantly threatened to swallow it. For centuries, its inhabitants lived on raised mounds and fought a losing battle against the water, as storms ate away at the island's edges. By the mid-nineteenth century, life had become so precarious that in 1859 the Dutch government ordered the island to be evacuated. Then, in the twentieth century, the Dutch did something extraordinary: they enclosed the Zuiderzee with a dam, the Afsluitdijk, completed in 1932, and drained large parts of it to create new land. The Noordoostpolder, drained in 1942, swallowed Schokland, and the former island now rises slightly above the surrounding fields, a long green ridge in a flat landscape of farmland. In 1995, Schokland became the first Dutch site to be listed by UNESCO, as a symbol of the Netherlands' heroic struggle against the water.
Read the complete Schokland and Surroundings write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Schokland and Surroundings sits at 204 km, about halfway. Next is back through 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.
back through Droogmakerij de Beemster comes up about 338 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Fort Werk IV.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Fort Werk IV write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 391 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Fort Werk IV. Next is back through Woerden-Centrum.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Woerden-Centrum write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Woerden-Centrum, late in the day. Next is 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.
The route ends here after 486 km.
Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout → Woerden-Centrum is 42 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Woerden-Centrum → Fort Werk IV is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Fort Werk IV → Droogmakerij de Beemster is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Droogmakerij de Beemster → Schokland and Surroundings is 98 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Schokland and Surroundings → back through Droogmakerij de Beemster is 95 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Droogmakerij de Beemster → back through Fort Werk IV is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Fort Werk IV → back through Woerden-Centrum is 50 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Woerden-Centrum → Mill Network at Kinderdijk-Elshout is 43 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.