Day 83: The Netherlands

This night was really cold. Temperatures got down to 5°. This is the limit of the comfort zone of my sleeping bag. And it lives up to this. I wasn't fully comfortable but it was still ok.

The first goal of the day was "'s Hertogenbosch". The city is probably quite ok to live in, but does not offer extraordinary sights.

Remainder of the castle in "'s Hertogenbosch"

After this I tried to stay away from cities and just continue cycling. By now I'd rather get home earlier and leave everything on the way to a later visit. It's not that far from home.



Dutch version of combining a motorway with a bicycle path. 




A problem I encountered is that BRouter favors larger roads. But the Netherlands have an interesting system of interconnected good cycling paths/roads where the crossroads are numbered and you are guided from one to the next by these numbers. I could not get BRouter to use the nicer paths.

Installing the fietsknoop app should help. But at first I am completely annoyed by the usability. You cannot just select a target "knoop", instead you have to specify start and end knoops. The cannot be to far apart, otherwise no route can be found. This could be improved a lot. But after creating a route to the german border (with some manual placed intermediate points) I got it working at least. 

Some time before you get to a knoop you are told what the followup knoop is. At the knoop you find a sign pointing the way.
The system of the knoops is a good idea. But in still has to be improved. Often you cycle into a crossroad without knowing which way to turn, which is not a save thing to do when other vehicles are there as well. Still it is a start.

Another thing that is different in the Netherlands: Nobody wears masks anymore. In the supermarkets I was the only one still wearing a mask. I had thought that some people would continue to wear masks even if they are not mandated anymore. But this is not the case. 

Tomorrow I will probably cross the border to Germany :) From there I should be able to get home within three days.

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