Our European Cycling Adventure 2019

By Johan - It’s always a treat to visit the Netherlands to catch up with family and friends. We are fortunate that we are able to “pop-in” from time to time to keep in touch because although the Internet is great to find out what’s happening, there is nothing quite like a hug, a toast and an evening of face to face banter with the people that are so dear to us. We absolutely loved it and we thank everybody for their amazing hospitality and “gezelligheid” once again.  No surprises here; the biking in the Netherlands is always great; it’s flat and there are cycleways everywhere.  We followed various canals and rivers from the German border near Kerkrade to get to Someren, my old home town.  We were impressed with the European cycleways all the way from Slovenia to Germany and between, however the Dutch put it up another notch. You literally can go just about anywhere using cycleways only. Despite the fact it’s densely populated, there are numerous beautiful scenic cycleways...

Okay we didn’t visit many cities on this piece of the trip. It was through France, Luxemborg, Germany, Belgium and finally Nederland! People don’t speak much about the nature in this part of Europe but its beatiful and easy to bike through. The only hard part is to figure out what language to use. German is your best bet, given most people around the German, French, Luxembourg and Belgium border towns we visited speak German, but also if you speak Dutch or French or English they will happily answer in German 😁. We found an old train track system to ride up the Ardennes and down again WOW! It kind of feels like cheating but during the world wars, Germany laid a lot of train tracks to a lot of places and a lot have been converted to cycle trails.. It has made this part of Europe very easy to travel by bike.  We left the Rhein in France by Breisach to go 8km west to Neuf-Brisach, a fortified town. Pretty awesome place from above (see stock photo above). The fortifications were design...