Bicycling The Netherlands, Day 1: Bruges To Middelburg (October 1, 2023)

In June of 2020, we were all set to do a bicycle tour of the Loire Valley to celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. Unfortunately, COVID hit and we had to cancel and reschedule for September of 2021 but COVID had made a strong resurgence and we rescheduled for September of 2022. I broke my collarbone at the beginning of August and we could not bicycle but did enjoy the Alsace and Burgundy regions of France (videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhykU7rY16iGJ1RtJRoOx8vuNIz5HniJs&si=QclXyJTJakpMJ8Mj ). We decided to skip the Loire Valley and try a ride in the bicycling mecca of the Netherlands. Since we had a sizable credit with Discover France we booked our trip through them and their partner Tulip Cycling.

Over five days of riding we went from Bruges Belgium to Leiden Netherlands enjoying the wonderful bicycling infrastructure and scenery of the Netherlands. So many canals, windmills, beautiful towns and countryside. Our first day of riding was from Bruges to Middelburg. It was a great ride on a spectacular day and we saw so many people out riding to enjoy a beautiful Sunday.

Ride with GPS:
https://ridewithgps.com/trips/136201230

———————————————————————–
Music
Hope by Mixaund | https://mixaund.bandcamp.com
Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com
———————————————————————–

Video/Photo Equipment
Osmo Action (with Windslayer wind noise reduction case)
Lumix FZ80
Pixel 3a

Video editing with DaVinci Resolve 18.6 on Windows 10 https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve

Thanks for watching this video. Please like and subscribe as more videos are to come. Comments are welcome, and we hope to learn and improve the content and quality of the videos.

BTW, we are not monetizing anything. After working for many years and saving for retirement we are enjoying biking, hiking, and traveling. These videos are to share the incredible things we are experiencing.

Rich and Julie
http://www.themnmoores.net

Well good morning we’re here in Brugge Belgium we’re going to start a 5-day Bike Tour we’re going to head up here to leaden in the Netherlands where we’ve been trying to do this trip since before Co and now we’re going to finally get to do this so we’re really excited to do it

Brues is such a beautiful Town we’re going to take a little different route to get the beauty of it for you on video but we’re really excited to do it Julie you all excited yeah we can’t wait uh this this has been a long long time

Planning and we’ve been here for 6 days and starting our tour here today is Sunday and we’ll end on Thursday in leaden well great come along with us should be a beautiful trip Today We noticed that today the gate is open and looks like there’s actually somebody up there but I think maybe you have to wait your turn or whatever I’m going to go check it out that’s a steep climb coming up so this is where they ground the uh flower in this

Mill it did cost me5 to uh come up here it wasn’t real apparent but I think it was worth it to come up and take a look Through wow that is steep but uh just take your time well worth it so windmill number three of four I think we get to see one more this one’s kind of obscured yeah it’s a Sunday so everybody’s out enjoying the beautiful weather supposed to be a record high Today Well it didn’t take us long to get out of into the country here Countryside we’re going to go along this canal for quite a ways into the Netherlands we should be hitting that border pretty quick I think we’re on this side this is what the route takes us on it’s kind of

Nice cuz you can see the sun Morning Sun is on the trees across the way so beautiful I don’t maybe 4 miles into our 31 miles for the Day This is beautiful huh beautiful amazing perfect weather Yep So we’re going to take a little detour you can go straight into the town that way SL SLK I think it is we’re in the Netherlands now we’re going to cross this bridge and then we’re going to go along the moat which is a really unique like double

Star-shaped moat that my son was telling me about the history Expert so you can see you got two moates and we’re riding down the middle of them so now we’re going to head back through the center of town back to the bike path that we were on and of course I think in every Dutch town there’s got to be a a windmill or

Some Nature the nice sunny 70° Fahrenheit weather SLO was very crowded and the restaurant we wanted to go to right there was closed so we ended up going to a bakery and getting some paninis and some Dessert well we have paninis there but now we got the dessert we got a truffle cake and then we got a F chocolate cake they are Delicious I think it’s safe to say we saw thousands of people out riding their bikes on this beautiful day it turned out to be 73° fah that day so we’re uh touring Just a Touch just to see if we can’t find someplace to go to the bathroom there was no water closets we

Didn’t go to a restaurant the bakery didn’t have one well mission accomplished we were able to uh have a gap between Riders there so we could uh go to the bathroom that’s the only thing there is really no uh bathroom facilities along the bike Paths It turns out we were supposed to turn right here at this intersection but we went straight cuz it was a nice bike path we need to take a right up here we got a little bit off course head over to the town that’s over there so luckily not too uh much maybe

An extra half mile but I doubt even [Applause] That okay we’re back on our path Here oh wow look at that Roof I’ve never seen any Cales like this before in my Life As we were riding we saw a lot of harvesting going on at first we thought they were potatoes but they turned out to be sugar Beets Well I’m just so jealous this this infrastructure here in the Netherlands it’s just Amazing So I think that’s our ferry boat but it’s not supposed to leave for another 15 minutes so I think we got It so we’re going look looks like we made it about 5 minutes to spare it’s going to be taken off got reduced Fair since we’re 65 $420 very nice out Y Let’s just stop here for a second and make sure we’re going the right way well it was interesting but that was the wrong way so we’re going to head back to the bike path we’re supposed to be using if we can find it looks like it’s um under construction okay we’ll figure

This out okay looks like we’re right here we got her not really sure what that is look like buoys or something like That Wow what a beautiful city this Is our GPS route dropped us off here and there was no B and be at this location I think it was because we are riding the route backwards to accommodate the winds at this time of Year we found our B&B on Google Maps and set a route and went through the city center to get there we returned to the city center to have dinner that night Finally made it to our BNB the port house it was a nice old unique building we were on the third floor with very steep stairs getting up there with the luggage after settling in in a beer we headed back into the city center and went to Picola Italia for some pizza and

Spaghetti carbonara wonderful Meal we could not have asked for a better day for the first day of our bike tour going from Brugge to middleberg fery was fun just seeing all the people out enjoying such a beautiful day it was amazing to see so many people bicycling and enjoying themsel it’s just a way of

Life there in the Netherlands with a few wrong turns and a little bathroom break we ended up doing about 33 Mi or 34 miles if you Min us out the ferry ride thank you for watching our video like it if you liked it please comment below and

Subscribe so you can stay current with our adventures