Yesterday was quite a nice day for a bicycle ride. I haven't made that many kilometers this week since I've only been commuting by bike once. I really had to make some kilomters in the weekend to make up for this. After all I'll have to increase the length of my rides because I've planned a 200+ kilometer ride with some friends at the end of June 😬
I still have time for that...
And so I planned my route for today. I didn't have that much time to go for a very long ride, I decided to add some climbs to the route. Climbs? In the Netherlands? Yes! We don't have mountains, but we do have some climbs. Not very high and long ones, but if you do them a couple of times after eachother, it counts up...
Just before I left, the sun disappeared behind some clouds. They hadn't forecast any rain, so I did't take any precautions for that. Which was good since it turned out to become a sunny ride.
Since the wind came from the Nort-West I decided to ride to the north first. I chose a road alongside a canal that goes quite a long way towards one of the most famous climbs in the region; 'Het kopje van Bloemendaal'.
The cycling path was quite busy with other cyclists and among them there were quite a few tourists. There are quite a few flower fields along this route. And tourists are the worst since a lot of them don't cycle that much and they only have eyes for the flower fields (which is understandable when you see the image below which I took during the ride).
But nevertheless you have to be careful. Luckily you can recognize the tourists directly by their rental bikes. My bell made over hours today 😂
Halfway on my route there was 'het kopje'. I chose to go ther because I wanted to test my new Bianchi on some climbs. I now have electronic shifing, a light carbon frame and hydrolic disc brakes for the descent.
The climbs is with just a kilometer not that long, but with percentages up to 9% it's a serious climb. On top of the climb there is a mailbox. There used to be a real one there, but now it's a fake one. The mailbox used to indicate the summit of the climb. On the mailbox you see former Dutch pro cyclist Gerrie Knetemann who lived nearby and spent a lot of training hours on this climb.
The first run I went up via the 'Koninginneduinweg'. This has the steepest part of 9% and has 44 meters of elevation.
I went down on the other side, turned around and went back up from that side too. It's a less steep climb, but unlike the other side there is no small descent in the middle.
At the mailbox I descended from the side I climbed first. Turned around at the bottom and climbed it for the third time. This one overlaps a lot with the first climn, but the start is a bit different.
After three climbs I took the same route back home. The total elevation gain during the ride was 310 meters, which is quite a lot for living in this part of the Netherlands.
If you want to get an impression of the ride, check out the video here:
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