20th Anniversary European Bike Adventure Day 6: Emmeloord to Groningen
Back out into the wilds of the Netherlands!
Actually not a super inspiring start to day 6. We packed up our stuff to head out, then looked at google maps for breakfast ideas. There weren't a ton of options. But finally we settled on a place that was just around the corner, and headed out. We found the restaurant, which was evidently part of a hotel, and after standing in the restaurant for 5 minutes being ignored by several employees milling about, they told us they weren't even open. So.. okay.
Then we headed back to our favorite strip mall, where many more things were open than the night before. But none of them really "breakfast places". We finally settled on a bakery that had a couple breakfasty pastries, and sat out in the strip mall to eat.
Mmm. Cheesebread.
Which was fairly lovely, until a random gust of wind brought a cloud of black ash that covered us, our bikes, and the food we hadn't eaten yet. Okay. Breakfast over. Back on the road.
This is probably the day I have the smallest number of pictures for. I actually had to watch my vlog to remember if anything else happened that I hadn't gotten pictures for. Thanks, past self, for helping me out with these trip reports!
The day started out pretty boring. Just a ton of fields, the croppy kind, either with new crops or no crops, so just dirt. Not ugly, per se, but not Pretty. Not what we'd come to expect from the Netherlands!
Then Matt pointed at something up in the sky by a random house, and we hit the brakes for our first pictures, because STORKS! And baby storks! This is what we've come to expect from the Netherlands!
And there was a lot of just random things like that through the day. Little towns with thatched-roof houses.
Little towns with cobblestone or brick roads and no bike path. I missed my fietspads. Even some just normal asphalt, chipseal roads with no bike lane at all.
Look how cute these little towns are! Also I dubbed this one Freaky MurderTown, because we didn't see a single person for the first few minutes we were riding through the town. I declare in this video that I don't need to get any postcards here, unless the town is literally called Freaky MurderTown, in which case I'm buying all the postcards.
Weird trees that they grow together into a sort of fence!
One thing the little towns we rode through didn't seem to have was.. food. It got to be lunch time, and we were in a little town, so we checked google maps for possibilities. And there were maybe 2 places, and both were closed. So we decided to try the next town. (The good news was these tiny towns were close enough together that "let's try the next town" was maybe a 20-30 minute delay rather than a 2 hour delay.)
When we got to the next town, the ONLY thing we could find was a little "snack bar". These are fairly common, and seem to basically be the fast food restaurants of the Netherlands. With no drive through. But they sell burgers and hot dogs, and usually also pizza and kebabs. 99% of the "fast food" places sold pizza and kebabs.
It wasn't what we wanted, but we were not spoiled for choices at that point, so we stopped and went in. And.. it still really wasn't what we wanted. So we left and decided to try the next town.
Which fortunately DID have a cute little cafe/tea bar which was open and delicious.
And after lunch, we discovered it also had a photogenic and accessible windmill available for us!
A couple towns later we were just cruising along, and we came over a little rise (I probably jokingly complained about how I thought this trip wouldn't have hills, because I made that joke on every "hill" we found in the Netherlands. Because there really weren't any. It was amazing. I also didn't really appreciate how few hills there were properly until we got to Oslo. Where they were storing all the hills.) What was I saying? Oh yes, little rise, and there was the tiniest little horse!
Slammed on the brakes, parked the bike, and ran over to fawn over this little horse. Along with a herd of small girls who appeared to be heading home from school. We all wanted to steal that little horse, pretty sure.
Then back on the bike and through a lovely canopy of super green and lush trees. As we neared the end of the tunnel, Matt said, "Oh my" and veered off to the right through some barriers. We had found our first single track!
The app Matt was using for most of our trip, kamoot, gave a breakdown of the road surface types that were in a particular segment. For all the previous Netherlands rides, it was almost exclusively bike path, with a couple meters of road/street tossed in to get to and from our accommodations usually. But he'd noticed in upcoming segments that there were a couple days that had "single track" listed. Which for me usually means like a narrow hiking path. But maybe kamoot had a different definition?
Turns out no. We turned onto a little gravel path, as kamoot requested.
It was fairly generous at first, wide enough to ride two abreast if we were so inclined. Then it got narrower and narrower, and the terrain completely changed. Gone was the green canopy of trees, and now it was scrubby grass, no trees, almost like we were back in the dunes next to the sea, or maybe up at the treeline in some mountains.
An unnecessarily long video of part of that trail!
It was actually really neat, and such a fun change to where we'd been the last few days, and I enjoyed that part. "Single track is great!", I thought. This Amy had no idea how future Amy was going to feel about off road/path in the next week.
And then after the single track ended, it was right back to green, lush countryside. So strange.
I actually don't at all remember where this was, but whee!
We also stopped at one point when we rode past a random big piece of art outside a forest area, and took video of us riding around the art. Because we hadn't gotten any video of both of us riding, because.. that's a weird, awkward thing to take video of. And predictably, it's a weird, awkward video! Yay!
This next video is a video of just a completely random moment while we were out in the middle of the Netherlands. I tended to hit Record on the GoPro if there was a bridge, a lake, or anything else that looked like it might be pretty or notable. In this case, it was the giant machine in the road. And as a bonus, I got a random old guy and his keeper, standing next to the machine. These are the random memories we laughed about afterward.
shrug
And then we got to Grongingen.
We were excited to get to see/stay in Groningen. Per wikipedia, "Groningen has been called the "World Cycling City" because 57% of journeys within the city are made by bicycle." Cars are disincentivized downtown, and it's mostly all bikes and pedestrians. Which sounds amazing in theory.
I don't even remember why I took this picture, other than maybe just to show how many bikes/people were stopped here at this crossing.
In practice, if a very tired person rides into the downtown area during evening rush hour, it's a little terrifying. It started slow, as we rode on the great bike paths into town, and then a nice little loop around campus. Then as we got to the heart of the city, things got scarier. There were still cars, and we tried to do what the other cyclists were doing, but sometimes a group of cyclists would go, and then it would turn out they were locals doing stupid stuff, and we'd kinda get caught up with them, and the cars weren't too pleased about the cyclists. Or we'd come up on a group of cyclists all going straight, and we'd need to get to an outer edge to turn left or right. I guess it doesn't help that we were trying to navigate by phone in a completely unfamiliar city, which makes late-game decisions very challenging.
Here's a few minutes of downtown riding. It kinda shows (a) how there are still cars, though as we got further downtown, there were fewer cars, (b) how many PEOPLE there are, on bikes and on foot, and (c) the sheer number of bikes. Being ridden, being walked, and just seas of bikes on racks.
But we made it! I was SO happy to find out accommodation and get off the bike. I was sweaty and a little shaky from how stressful that ride in was.
Our airbnb was, amazingly, even smaller than the tiny house in Emmeloord! Also not quite as nice, but it was in a super convenient location downtown (I mean, other than trying to get to it during rush hour), and that made walking around to find dinner and see what little we saw of the city very convenient.
Our tiny place was made even tinier by our keeping our bikes in the one tiny room. But.. downtown. And lots and lots of people walking by outside. And paranoia.
The bathrooms are getting ever smaller! Also ever smaller of division between toilet and shower!
DEFINITELY not ADA compliant.
Of course, trying to find a place to eat ended up being painful. We had been out on the road long enough at this point that we were having decision fatigue. Since we were in a new place every meal, basically, we had to start completely over in our searching and decision-making each meal. And at some point you just no longer care, you just want food, and not to have to think!
So yes, we chose our dinner location in Groningen just based on the name of the restaurant, because it entertained us.
Did we set out to find a "vegetarian Mediterranean" restaurant that night? We did not, but it ended up being delicious, and we did not regret our choice. Other than they didn't take credit cards. And we had no cash. But they were fine with us dashing out the door after we ate, trusting us to return after finding an ATM. Which we did. Whew.
It was really delicious.
And we randomly decided to get the "ice cream for two", not realizing it would be SO AMAZING! It was our anniversary ice cream, even if they didn't know that when they served it to us.
Then a little after dinner stroll back to our place.
The next day, day 7, promised to be.. very long, and very exciting.
Total miles for day 6: 64.03 miles from Emmeloord to Groningen, Netherlands
Actually not a super inspiring start to day 6. We packed up our stuff to head out, then looked at google maps for breakfast ideas. There weren't a ton of options. But finally we settled on a place that was just around the corner, and headed out. We found the restaurant, which was evidently part of a hotel, and after standing in the restaurant for 5 minutes being ignored by several employees milling about, they told us they weren't even open. So.. okay.
Then we headed back to our favorite strip mall, where many more things were open than the night before. But none of them really "breakfast places". We finally settled on a bakery that had a couple breakfasty pastries, and sat out in the strip mall to eat.
Mmm. Cheesebread.
Which was fairly lovely, until a random gust of wind brought a cloud of black ash that covered us, our bikes, and the food we hadn't eaten yet. Okay. Breakfast over. Back on the road.
This is probably the day I have the smallest number of pictures for. I actually had to watch my vlog to remember if anything else happened that I hadn't gotten pictures for. Thanks, past self, for helping me out with these trip reports!
The day started out pretty boring. Just a ton of fields, the croppy kind, either with new crops or no crops, so just dirt. Not ugly, per se, but not Pretty. Not what we'd come to expect from the Netherlands!
Then Matt pointed at something up in the sky by a random house, and we hit the brakes for our first pictures, because STORKS! And baby storks! This is what we've come to expect from the Netherlands!
And there was a lot of just random things like that through the day. Little towns with thatched-roof houses.
Little towns with cobblestone or brick roads and no bike path. I missed my fietspads. Even some just normal asphalt, chipseal roads with no bike lane at all.
Click to viewLook how cute these little towns are! Also I dubbed this one Freaky MurderTown, because we didn't see a single person for the first few minutes we were riding through the town. I declare in this video that I don't need to get any postcards here, unless the town is literally called Freaky MurderTown, in which case I'm buying all the postcards.
Weird trees that they grow together into a sort of fence!
One thing the little towns we rode through didn't seem to have was.. food. It got to be lunch time, and we were in a little town, so we checked google maps for possibilities. And there were maybe 2 places, and both were closed. So we decided to try the next town. (The good news was these tiny towns were close enough together that "let's try the next town" was maybe a 20-30 minute delay rather than a 2 hour delay.)
When we got to the next town, the ONLY thing we could find was a little "snack bar". These are fairly common, and seem to basically be the fast food restaurants of the Netherlands. With no drive through. But they sell burgers and hot dogs, and usually also pizza and kebabs. 99% of the "fast food" places sold pizza and kebabs.
It wasn't what we wanted, but we were not spoiled for choices at that point, so we stopped and went in. And.. it still really wasn't what we wanted. So we left and decided to try the next town.
Which fortunately DID have a cute little cafe/tea bar which was open and delicious.
And after lunch, we discovered it also had a photogenic and accessible windmill available for us!
A couple towns later we were just cruising along, and we came over a little rise (I probably jokingly complained about how I thought this trip wouldn't have hills, because I made that joke on every "hill" we found in the Netherlands. Because there really weren't any. It was amazing. I also didn't really appreciate how few hills there were properly until we got to Oslo. Where they were storing all the hills.) What was I saying? Oh yes, little rise, and there was the tiniest little horse!
Slammed on the brakes, parked the bike, and ran over to fawn over this little horse. Along with a herd of small girls who appeared to be heading home from school. We all wanted to steal that little horse, pretty sure.
Then back on the bike and through a lovely canopy of super green and lush trees. As we neared the end of the tunnel, Matt said, "Oh my" and veered off to the right through some barriers. We had found our first single track!
The app Matt was using for most of our trip, kamoot, gave a breakdown of the road surface types that were in a particular segment. For all the previous Netherlands rides, it was almost exclusively bike path, with a couple meters of road/street tossed in to get to and from our accommodations usually. But he'd noticed in upcoming segments that there were a couple days that had "single track" listed. Which for me usually means like a narrow hiking path. But maybe kamoot had a different definition?
Turns out no. We turned onto a little gravel path, as kamoot requested.
It was fairly generous at first, wide enough to ride two abreast if we were so inclined. Then it got narrower and narrower, and the terrain completely changed. Gone was the green canopy of trees, and now it was scrubby grass, no trees, almost like we were back in the dunes next to the sea, or maybe up at the treeline in some mountains.
An unnecessarily long video of part of that trail!
It was actually really neat, and such a fun change to where we'd been the last few days, and I enjoyed that part. "Single track is great!", I thought. This Amy had no idea how future Amy was going to feel about off road/path in the next week.
And then after the single track ended, it was right back to green, lush countryside. So strange.
I actually don't at all remember where this was, but whee!
We also stopped at one point when we rode past a random big piece of art outside a forest area, and took video of us riding around the art. Because we hadn't gotten any video of both of us riding, because.. that's a weird, awkward thing to take video of. And predictably, it's a weird, awkward video! Yay!
This next video is a video of just a completely random moment while we were out in the middle of the Netherlands. I tended to hit Record on the GoPro if there was a bridge, a lake, or anything else that looked like it might be pretty or notable. In this case, it was the giant machine in the road. And as a bonus, I got a random old guy and his keeper, standing next to the machine. These are the random memories we laughed about afterward.
shrug
And then we got to Grongingen.
We were excited to get to see/stay in Groningen. Per wikipedia, "Groningen has been called the "World Cycling City" because 57% of journeys within the city are made by bicycle." Cars are disincentivized downtown, and it's mostly all bikes and pedestrians. Which sounds amazing in theory.
I don't even remember why I took this picture, other than maybe just to show how many bikes/people were stopped here at this crossing.
In practice, if a very tired person rides into the downtown area during evening rush hour, it's a little terrifying. It started slow, as we rode on the great bike paths into town, and then a nice little loop around campus. Then as we got to the heart of the city, things got scarier. There were still cars, and we tried to do what the other cyclists were doing, but sometimes a group of cyclists would go, and then it would turn out they were locals doing stupid stuff, and we'd kinda get caught up with them, and the cars weren't too pleased about the cyclists. Or we'd come up on a group of cyclists all going straight, and we'd need to get to an outer edge to turn left or right. I guess it doesn't help that we were trying to navigate by phone in a completely unfamiliar city, which makes late-game decisions very challenging.
Here's a few minutes of downtown riding. It kinda shows (a) how there are still cars, though as we got further downtown, there were fewer cars, (b) how many PEOPLE there are, on bikes and on foot, and (c) the sheer number of bikes. Being ridden, being walked, and just seas of bikes on racks.
But we made it! I was SO happy to find out accommodation and get off the bike. I was sweaty and a little shaky from how stressful that ride in was.
Our airbnb was, amazingly, even smaller than the tiny house in Emmeloord! Also not quite as nice, but it was in a super convenient location downtown (I mean, other than trying to get to it during rush hour), and that made walking around to find dinner and see what little we saw of the city very convenient.
Our tiny place was made even tinier by our keeping our bikes in the one tiny room. But.. downtown. And lots and lots of people walking by outside. And paranoia.
The bathrooms are getting ever smaller! Also ever smaller of division between toilet and shower!
DEFINITELY not ADA compliant.
Of course, trying to find a place to eat ended up being painful. We had been out on the road long enough at this point that we were having decision fatigue. Since we were in a new place every meal, basically, we had to start completely over in our searching and decision-making each meal. And at some point you just no longer care, you just want food, and not to have to think!
So yes, we chose our dinner location in Groningen just based on the name of the restaurant, because it entertained us.
Did we set out to find a "vegetarian Mediterranean" restaurant that night? We did not, but it ended up being delicious, and we did not regret our choice. Other than they didn't take credit cards. And we had no cash. But they were fine with us dashing out the door after we ate, trusting us to return after finding an ATM. Which we did. Whew.
It was really delicious.
And we randomly decided to get the "ice cream for two", not realizing it would be SO AMAZING! It was our anniversary ice cream, even if they didn't know that when they served it to us.
Then a little after dinner stroll back to our place.
The next day, day 7, promised to be.. very long, and very exciting.
Total miles for day 6: 64.03 miles from Emmeloord to Groningen, Netherlands