The day had finally arrived!! It was time to pedal to Zuiderpark parkrun!
On Thursday 2 June 2022, Ian (my husband) and I loaded up the van with our bikes and panniers and set off for two weeks of cycling around Holland and Germany. The plan was to cycle 700 miles, taking part in in Zuiderpark parkrun and Unisee parkrun, and completing my parkrun alphabet.
This was the trip that had inspired Pedal to parkrun, and after two and a half years of Covid delays and changed plans, we were actually doing it!
Getting ready to go
I’d been planning to travel to Europe and cycle to a parkrun to “bag my Z” since 2019. I’d originally planned to do this in Żary and then in Zielona Góra, both in Poland, but when Zuiderpark started up in late 2021, this became the new goal. Lots more on this in my Changing Plans blog post.
We booked the StenaLine overnight ferry from Harwich to Hoek van Holland (Hook of Holland).
I’d originally envisaged taking the P&O ferry from Hull to Rotterdam, but when I was just about to make the booking P&O laid off all their crews at a moment’s notice. The uncertainty around what was going to happen next and the moral outrage at what they’d done caused me to reconsider. Harwich was a longer drive at the UK end, but it seemed like the right decision to make.
As I went to make the booking, six weeks before we were due to travel, I discovered that Ian’s passport had expired in October 2021. How had we (he) not realised this!? The standard application process currently stated that a replacement could take up to 10 weeks to arrive. This sent me into a bit of a panic, but it turned out that he could make a date to go down to the Passport Office in Peterborough for a “fast track” appointment. The first available appointment was three weeks later so I was very glad I hadn’t left it any more last-minute to book the tickets.
Travelling to Holland
As we were booked on the overnight ferry, we didn’t need to leave home until lunch time. We drove down from Nottingham to Harwich in the van.
When we got to the port it took us a while to find the car park, then we said goodbye to the van and cycled over to get in the queue. We had to line up amongst the cars and our lane seemed like the only one that wasn’t moving!
I was vaguely amused by the sign which said that tonight’s onboard film was Death on the Nile. Better than Titanic I suppose!
In the end we switched lanes and finally made it through passport control at about 8.30pm.
On the other side there was a segregated lane for bikes and motorbikes, which seemed better, although they still let one of the car lanes go before us! We took turns to nip to the loo, and then we joined the queue again.
One of our fellow cyclists warned us about the steep hill on the way up to the ferry entrance – he wasn’t wrong! He said he had been to Holland on cycling trips before and was planning to camp for a few nights this time. He seemed quite concerned about the weather, which didn’t bode well!
We reached the edge of the ramp and dismounted to push our bikes across. There wasn’t a huge amount of direction but we just followed the other cyclists, some of whom seemed to know what they were doing! We got to the bike area and fastened our bikes to the barriers with the rope provided.
We then made our way up a LOT of stairs with our panniers to find our cabin, which was a lot nicer than I’d expected. After settling in, we had a wander around the ferry and a couple of drinks in the bar before retiring for the night. Our favourite discovery was a channel on the cabin TV which showed the on-board dog kennels.
The next morning, we were woken by a 6am alarm clock over the tannoy. It was a good job as Holland was an hour ahead of BST and because my phone had been in flight mode (recommended to avoid satellite phone charges) the time hadn’t changed so it would have gone off an hour too late.
We had a shower, a cup of tea, and a cereal bar and I went for a wander onto the deck. I made my way through all the smokers standing right outside the door but it was super windy outside so after a quick glance around I beat a hasty retreat.
Another tannoy announcement told us it was time to return to the vehicle deck so we headed down and unfastened and loaded our bikes. After a 5-minute wait during which the vehicle fumes started to get a bit much, we were released!
Hoek van Holland to Den Haag
I took this photo as we got off the ferry, and then later found out that SteLa Tandem were in their minivan in the background! I’d been following them on Instagram for a while – they were on their way to Berlin to start their attempt to break the World Record for cycling around the world on a tandem (180 days). Unfortunately, I didn’t realise we were on the same ferry until afterwards as it would have been nice to say hello.
We queued for about 30 minutes for passport control and then we were ready to go! We knew we wanted to follow the Kustroute – the coast route which follows the North Sea Coast through various different countries as part of Eurovelo route 12 – up to Den Haag but there weren’t any immediately obvious signs. I’d downloaded GPS routes for each day based on the established long distance cycle routes that criss-cross Holland and Germany, which we’d uploaded to our Wahoo. My friend had lent me his Garmin too so we had a back up in case anything went wrong! We turned on the GPS and it wasn’t long at all until we picked up the route.
I immediately encountered a mechanical issue where my chain kept “jumping”. Ian had a look but wasn’t able to resolve it straight away, so I just avoided certain gears for a while! We cycled about 6 miles through the dunes before stopping at a village called Monster and consulting Google Maps to look for a café to have some breakfast.
We found the wonderful Bondi Beach café, which was just opening up as we arrived. It was just the most amazing setting to have our first meal of the trip! I’m not exaggerating at all when I say it was the best omelette I’ve ever had in my life.
Fuelled up, we set off again towards Den Haag. It was lovely riding through the sand dunes on such a well-maintained dedicated cycle path. The weather was just perfect!
It was only about 13 miles in total from the port to the city, so we arrived a couple of hours too early to check into our hotel. We explored the harbour and cycled down to the end of the harbour wall. There were lots of surfers out and about and some of them had created DIY surfboard racks on their bikes.
We stopped at a café near the harbour for a cold drink and then headed down to the beach area where we had an ice cream. Eating and drinking was to become quite a central theme of this trip!
We plotted a route on Google Maps from where we were to our hotel and I fastened my phone to my handlebars with the very cheap and wobbly mount I’d bought from eBay. Every time we went over a bump I was convinced it was going to fall off and had to keep steadying it!
We went through the city centre, including past Vredespaleis (the Peace Palace) – home to the International Court of Justice and Permanent Court of Arbitration.
At this point we weren’t overly familiar with the cycling rules and etiquette so cycling through such a major city with lots of junctions was a bit terrifying at times! There weren’t that many cars around but so many bikes everywhere!
We made it to our accommodation – The Student Hotel – and checked in. It says it’s for people who are “students at heart” but we seemed like the oldest people there.
The hotel courtyard is locked at night but the bike racks are only the type you can lock your wheel to, so we were rebels and locked ours to the posts holding up the roof instead!
With our sightseeing and getting to the hotel we cycled a total of 20 miles – this was to be the shortest day of the trip, with the next 13 days of cycling ranging between 24 and 84 miles each.
Exploring Den Haag
After we’d checked in and had a shower we went for a wander around the city. I stopped to take a photo of the Binnenhof (the Dutch parliament building) and got asked by a group of girls to take a picture of them in front of it, which of course I did. Then a very well-dressed and made-up woman asked me to take a photo of her too – she was definitely some kind of (wannabe?) Instagram influencer because I had to keep re-taking it until she had one she liked! I tried to find the photo online later but had no luck.
We went to a café in a pretty square for a cold drink, then walked back to the hotel before getting ready to go out again and meet some fellow parkrun tourists. I’m a member of the UK parkrun tourists Facebook group, and when it became apparent that lots of us were heading to Zuiderpark this weekend, a chap called Tony set up a Messenger group to coordinate a meet-up.
The plan was to meet and eat at Ethica, a restaurant 5 minutes from our hotel. It was a crazy weekend of cancelled flights and travel disruption so not everyone could make it for the original meet-up time. In the end there were 10 of us and we had a lovely chat over a drink. Sian and Paula were also on a cycle touring trip – they’d already done a few days of cycling and had a few more to do after parkrun before they headed home to Newcastle.
The menu didn’t turn out to be quite what we had all expected. It was a very expensive set-menu of fancy, ethically sourced food in very small portions. A few of us had one small dish but after that we went our separate ways and Ian and I found a fantastic vegetarian restaurant called The Leaf. We were the only people in there and we had a great (big) meal and a nice chat with the owner.
We didn’t get our food until 9.45pm so afterwards we were ready to walk straight back and hit the sack!
Zuiderpark parkrun
Ian had been suffering with a bit of a dodgy ankle for some time and decided he wasn’t going to run today to give his ankle the best chance of holding up over a fortnight of cycling. He came along to cheer me on though.
It was about 2 miles to Zuiderpark from our hotel, and again I plotted the route on Google maps and unconvincingly strapped my phone to my handlebars.
I knew there was no purple sign or photo frame at this parkrun (can you believe it!?) so on the way into the park we stopped to get the all-important photo.
We bumped into the other UK tourists from the night before as well as quite a few others. Susan and her husband used to live just down the road from where we live now – small world!
The briefing was given in English and Dutch and then we made our way to the start line.
Because of a festival happening in the park later on, the course had been modified from the usual two laps to three shorter laps. It was all on tarmac and completely flat.
Susan and I were chatting about times on the start line and she said she was aiming for her first ever sub-26 minute parkrun. I was planning to take it easy, knowing how much cycling was ahead, but I often say that and then can’t help pushing myself. Susan and I pretty much ran round together, with her overtaking me on the final lap to finish in an amazing time of 25.20! I finished 10 seconds behind her, only 15 seconds off my PB!
There were 79 finishers and I was in position 37. I think at least 80% of those running must have been UK tourists.
We didn’t hang around for much post-parkrun faff as we had a 50-mile bike ride ahead of us, but some of the others went to the café and gave it a good review!
We headed back to our hotel where I had a quick shower before we loaded our bikes up and got on the road to Utrecht…Pedal to Unisee parkrun blog coming soon!