Dutch Coast - Calais to Groningen

JonnyBravo

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Anyone have experience of heading up the Dutch coast (over the N57, A7 etc) to the Groningen area ?
It means trying to keep west of Brugges, Rotterdam, plowing through the Hague and keeping west of Amsterdam.

An OK ride with a few nice sights of the coast - or a fecking tortuous non event bedevilled by traffic lights and trucks and a possible cause for chucking yourself into a canal ?

any info gratefully received
 
Take the road along the big sea dyke, it’s about the most interesting thing you’ll find.

Actually, that’s very unfair and probably untrue. You can find all sorts of little roads across the countryside but you’ll need a decent map. Pump the two towns into Kurviger and set it to the twistiest setting.
 
Nice enough run, pretty towns and villages it's not THAT bad:D

Stick you sat nav info on and see how far below sea level you can get, put your finger in a dyke, check out Windy Miller's retirement gaff, see if you can get your clogs down, Spot wildlife, a little mouse with clogs on Well I declare! Going clip-clippety-clop on the stairs.

Oh yeah!
 
The north of Holland is flat and extremely boring. The ''Afsluitdijk'' or ''big dyke across the north west of Holland'' is also pretty boring. Best is to head slightly inland of the Hague and head north east using the minor roads and coming out then close to Groningen. So basically East past Woerden towards Utrecht and Amersfoort, Apeldoorn and then Head North at Deventer along the river all the way to Zwolle. The Next stages get pretty uneventful, very flat and not too much to see but from Zwolle again north east towards Hoogenveen and eventually Assen. Depends how much time you have and where you intend to get to.
If you want to get to Germany there are a lot better ways to go
If you want more details PM me.
 
Thanks for the replies guys

Kurviger takes me in land and heads NE on the back roads - so that probably tells me everything I need to know about the dutch coast !

We are trying to do a loop (me and 2 others) over approx 7 days out of and back into Calais. in a big loop through Germany second week of July.
(first part was heading towards Bremen hence the question about Holland)

1 of the riders is not so fast and a little uncomfortable with bigger daily distances.
Because of my GSA steed of awesomeness, 600 mile days are no problem for me - the other two riders on more mortal motorcycles need to take it much steadier ;)
Our idea was to try and make it more about the ride and the places, stopping for pics and tasty lunch etc than total number of miles covered each day.

I will post up the vey general loop idea in a bit

thanks
 
Nice enough run, pretty towns and villages it's not THAT bad:D

Stick you sat nav info on and see how far below sea level you can get, put your finger in a dyke, check out Windy Miller's retirement gaff, see if you can get your clogs down, Spot wildlife, a little mouse with clogs on Well I declare! Going clip-clippety-clop on the stairs.

Oh yeah!

Got nothing against dykes just don't want to stick me fingers in one.
 
loop idea -
not going into the cities just using them as knownplaces to plot around

Calais, Rotterdam, Bremen, Kassel, Heidelberg, Strasbourg, Dijon, Paris !, Calais

Loop by jonny grey, on Flickr
 
Many moons ago I rode along the coast and island hopped on the ferries ~ I couldn't tell you the route but it was a couple of days of sleepy little villages and farm land......I quite enjoyed it :)

Andres
 
The Deltaworks north of the westerschelde tunnel are worth a look. The coast road between Den Helder and Groningen is scenic after the afsluitdijk too. I often used to try to get lost up there and the use my gps to get me back home to Assen without using motorways or major roads. Alternatively, if you can stay east of the A28 motorway between Zwolle (“zwoller”) and Hoogeveen (ho-ger-vane) there are some good roads. The Netherlands isn’t generally set up for B road travels though.
 
loop idea -
not going into the cities just using them as knownplaces to plot around

Calais, Rotterdam, Bremen, Kassel, Heidelberg, Strasbourg, Dijon, Paris !, Calais

Loop by jonny grey, on Flickr

Although you'll find some decent D's during the southern part of the loop I'd be tempted to head West sooner, meander around Mullerthal or little Switzerland in Luxembourg and carry on into the Ardennes where there are also some cracking biking roads, shorter route, more quality roads IMHO.

Consider heading east at top of loop and hitting Harz mountains in Germany, mountains is over stating it a bit but excellent, underrated hilly terrain and roughly 150 miles from Bremen at the top of your route. Thereafter suggestions for Western trip apply.

You'll no doubt enjoy your original route however cut down on the north to south and tweak your West to East (and back of course) and you'll encounter some magic motorcycling roads.

Apologies if this looks a bit like 'just change your trip' but I just think from a motorycling viewpoint you could have a much better experience in the time available.:thumb2
 
It’s amazing what the internet can turn up. I found this by Googling: motorcycle routes holland dutch netherlands. Just five words. Knowing that Google can usually do it with three, I tried it with: motorcycle routes Holland; it still worked.

That led me to a site http://www.lazymotorbike.eu/riding/holland/ where the hot links were dead, so I made a jump from what I read, to Google: anwb motorcycle route; three words again. This quickly brought me to the MyRoute app’s webpage. I’d guess in all, two minutes at the most, on an iPad. Here is what I found:

The ANWB is Holland’s version of the RAC, or Royal (Dutch) Automobile Club. Years ago they apparently collected together a bunch of routes that would show off ‘The best of Holland’, which they signposted. The signs are apparently gone but a Dutch bod made a record of them all, hosted on the ever popular MyRoute app. Are they any good? Who knows? Are they worth a look? I guess so but don’t go looking for bulb fields, they have all been harvested by now.

https://www.myrouteapp.com/en/info/collection/2/The-43-ANWB-Endangered-Routes

Scroll down to pick up the routes. To download the routes in a gps friendly format, you’ll need the MyRoute app but you can create them yourself quite easily with just a little effort.

Tapping on ‘View route’, brings up a separate description. From that page, tap on ‘Use route’. Several cover the area you are most interested in. Give it a go.



PS The same simple Google of just three words - motorcycle routes Holland - throws up loads of other sites to look at, I simply chose the easiest. Surf around. It’s free, you can’t break it and they can’t touch you for it....


PPS From your Kurviger map in post #7, Germany (and by association, Holland) is near enough flat once you cross a line on the axis: Antwerp, Essen, Bielefeld, Hanover, Rostock.
 
Many moons ago I rode along the coast and island hopped on the ferries ~ I couldn't tell you the route but it was a couple of days of sleepy little villages and farm land......I quite enjoyed it :)

Andres

half a pound of hash tends to create positive memories
 
Anyone have experience of heading up the Dutch coast (over the N57, A7 etc) to the Groningen area ?
It means trying to keep west of Brugges, Rotterdam, plowing through the Hague and keeping west of Amsterdam.

An OK ride with a few nice sights of the coast - or a fecking tortuous non event bedevilled by traffic lights and trucks and a possible cause for chucking yourself into a canal ?

any info gratefully received






I found this in Tourenfahrer-Motorrad magazine.

It may well answer your question:

https://www.tourenfahrer.de/tour-datenbank/tour/low-rider-788/detail/


bdacf68814219a7f2885e2b64c522adf.jpg



596e84664f76d4281ba0aec0b2fb1e43.jpg



b3c5be7ad26868c0c1999d36b044e9b6.jpg



By zooming in on the magazine’s route on their website, it would be easy to copy it onto a map or create it in say, BaseCamp for transfer into a GPS device.
 
Very kind indeed Sir - I will see what I can make of it.
I will see if I can create some of that in Tyre and export it into the TomTom app on my Galaxy S8.

I have already downloaded and tried the Kurviger App - gave it a quick go and it seems to push out the right sort of road options on a route, if maybe a little too Kurvy (and long!). Probably just needs practice on my part.
 
I can’t read a word of it but, like you, I can look at a picture and a map is always a map.

I had a little bit of an email exchange with the publisher / editor: (a) Thanking them for putting out a decent quality magazine (b) Asking them if they’d ever thought of doing an English version?

They had thought about it several times but as there are only two of them in the office to create the entire magazine, they really couldn’t devote the time to it, though recognising that it would increase their potential audience.
 


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