Hackney cyclist: Hook of Holland

Showing posts with label Hook of Holland. Show all posts

Sunday, 24 February 2019

Cycling between cities in the Netherlands part 14: Hook of Holland to Leiden

For the fourth year in a row I spent over a week cycling around the Netherlands last summer, at a steady and relaxed pace on my heavy Dutch bicycle. I arrived early on Saturday Morning, having taken a train direct from work on Friday night to the overnight ferry from Harwich to Hoek Van Holland. My previous Dutch trips had featured a mix of weather but all of them had involved rain at some point, with 2017 a particular wash out. I packed my waterproofs accordingly but they would remain inside my panniers at all times as the Netherlands, just like the UK, was experiencing the beginning of what would be a long, hot, dry summer and I wouldn't see a single drop of rain for the 10 days I was there. A glorious sunrise woke me up very early on the ferry and so I ate an early breakfast on board before watching us approach and dock from the deck whilst many of my fellow passengers continued to sleep.

After alighting from the ferry I cycled from the terminal, passing a sign welcoming me to the Netherlands within an EU flag, which briefly depressed me as I was reminded that this could be the final time I enter the country as an EU citizen, unless the UK comes to its senses soon and abandons this brexit nonsense. After briefly stopping at the supermarket in the town centre for water and food I cycled along a bidirectional cycleway alongside the N211. At a roundabout I turned right, ignoring a warning sign, only to find the cycle track closed for maintenance works. Not to worry, after looping back around the roundabout I simply used a dedicated cycleway on the opposite side of the road, elevated above it

As the road bent away the cycle path continued straight on before crossing a main road in a slightly staggered format, presumably to slow me down and to avoid cyclists crossing it at speed. As I crossed the road I couldn't help but notice how the layout here was almost certainly very new, the smooth asphalt, newly painted lines and the still not landscaped soil a dead giveaway. A quick check using the google streetview history feature when I returned home confirms this

Above: Before and after

After using the new crossing the cycleway continued on, sandwiched between fields and gigantic greenhouses before becoming an access only road (for motor traffic) as a fietstraat, which was achieved with a single bollard. The road became a cycleway as it continued straight ahead but I followed the road to the left to turn north towards the coast. I then climbed up and onto the North Sea cycle route

Now this brought back memories. The last time I was here was a decade ago, when I cycled directly to Amsterdam with a couple of friends along this route. I hadn't taken any photos back then but seem to remember it being a single path made from concrete slabs. This was quite clearly newly resurfaced asphalt, with freshly painted lines. Whats more there were now two paths, one for people cycling and another for those on foot. This excellent route continued for several kilometres, a smooth ride between huge greenhouses that feed the world and the North Sea, hidden from my view on the other side of the dike.

As the route continued seamlessly through the edge of Monster I was overtaken by dozens of middle aged men in Lycra, advertising they were all from a cycle club (or perhaps a one off charity ride) from Milton Keynes. I'd spotted a few of them on the ferry after breakfast and we couldn't have been dressed or had bikes that were more different but I exchanged a friendly hello with all of them as they passed. The cycleway ended and so I turned left onto an access road to the beach. It was still only just gone 9am and so the ample cycle parking at the beach was completely empty but would no doubt fill up later, as it was such a nice day. I returned to a smooth fietspad which twisted and turned as it weaved alongside the coast, mainly being used by men on road bikes out for an early morning ride.

The cycle path lead me to the seaside resort of Kijkduin where I was accommodated on cycle tracks during my brief visit. On my last visit here a decade earlier I had continued along this North Sea route for many more miles but here I turned inland towards the Hague, along a narrow path through woodland. I then turned right onto a road which had no cycling infrastructure at all, yet the space for thee lanes of motor traffic at the traffic lights. Turning left onto a main road I cycled along a narrow and bumpy painted cycle lane that gave up at every bus stop. This was my third time in the Hague and once again, I was unimpressed with the quality of cycling infrastructure here. Thankfully this soon became a cycleway separate from the carriageway and as I stopped at a traffic light I was struck that I was once again cycling among "normal" families, having really only seen mostly men on road bikes in lycra up until I'd reached the city. The cycleway continued, becoming bidirectional as I then cycled behind a man and his dog through an intersection and past a petrol station.

I was now cycling along President Kennedylaan and just after it turned into Johan De Wittlaan I passed Catshuis, the official residence of the Prime Minister of the Netherlands. I had absolutely no idea I was doing this at the time and this google streetview link shows how I probably didn't even notice the driveway at all, as the cycle track continues uninterrupted through it. The British Prime Minister would be there a little over a week later, arriving by car with the Dutch Prime minister arriving on his bike, presumably via the very same cycle track I was using. The cycleway continued along the road before peeling away from the roadway slightly as it headed though the outskirts of Scheveningen woods. I then turned left to cross the tram tracks and a canal and turned right at a roundabout (after going all the way round it first)

Cycling around a roundabout in Scheveningen pic.twitter.com/AejviP66PF
— Hackney Cyclist (@Hackneycyclist) February 24, 2019

At the next set of traffic lights I turned left to cross over the road and then stood there for a few minutes taking pictures at the various types of people using this crossing. I cycled away from here on a bidirectional cycleway and then turned left onto a road that was under reconstruction, and so I was left with just a makeshift path to slowly cycle on. Turning left onto a main road I was once again amazed that despite this being a wide road, with buses using it, there was no cycle infrastructure on it at all. It is really only in the Hague that I ever see this when I am in the Netherlands, for some reason. The road continued like this for the next 1.5km until it sharply turned to the left, but I turned off onto a path that lead through woods for a couple of kilometres. I came out onto a wide bidirectional cycleway alongside the N44 road. To my left were a series of buildings behind a high fence with an American flag positioned high in the air; it was quite obvious that this was the American Embassy. I continued alongside the N44 road, briefly turning around as I was impressed by the width of the cycleway as it split, with one half of it going under the main road to the other side of the carriageway

I continued along this cycleway which was separated from the busy road by trees and was wide and smooth so was being used by many different kinds of people. Where the N44 met the N14 road I briefly stopped at a traffic light but was then guided through seamlessly in one go over several traffic lanes and a cycleway crossing to the other side of the carriageway. A short barrier then appeared to protect me from the road and the cycleway became a fietstraat in order for motor vehicles to use as an access only road to access properties alongside. At this point I followed a path into the woods to have some food and a rest in a picnic area secluded in the woods, with just the odd jogger and dog walker passing me by as I sat there. I cycled back to the fietstraat which had large sound barriers to protect residents from the noise of the busy road. It very quickly became a cycleway once more but this time with little protection from the cars on the carriageway alongside

I was now on the outskirts of Wassenaar, which, according to the wikipedia entry, is well known as a very wealthy area of the country and the gigantic houses and gardens I was cycling past were confirmation of this. After passing two horses with a cart, the next set of traffic lights the cycleway became a fietstraat and then just a normal service road. I turned left away from this road, right at a roundabout and then onto a street which had an unusual layout - the car parking was inside of the cycle track, between the cycle track and the footway, instead of the usual layout of having the parking between the cycle track and footway.

Although the google streetview history shows this an improvement on the narrow painted cycle lane in the doorzone that used to be here. This layout soon ended as the cycleway was then sandwiched between the main road and a service road alongside. The markings on the road informed me that I was now entering a "school zone" with this precise school being the American School of the Hague and as I cycled past on a now bidirectional cycleway I glanced in to see a huge amount of cycle parking. I assume that many American children who attend this school cycle there but would probably never do so in their home country.

A study of efficient transport:
How to get to school
🚲 vs. 🚗
vid @daythorn & @BicycleDutch pic.twitter.com/GYsrdDuTnc
— Urban Planning & Mobility (@urbanthoughts11) February 12, 2019

You need to enable children to be able to safely cycle to school by creating safe, comfortable and convenient places to cycle such as this, rather than assuming it is due to culture. In fact the google street view car appears to have driven this way during the school run so plenty of children are on bikes, although several have helmets on, a rare sight on the Dutch school run. I guess you do export some cultures after all.

After passing the school playing fields the cycleway edged back towards the A44 motorway, although there were clearly major roadworks taking place. I was accommodated through these roadworks on a temporary cycleway of very good quality before rejoining the old cycleway. I've no doubt that once this widening / junction reconstruction work is complete that there will be an entirely new cycleway, along with underpasses or dedicated cycle crossings, whilst in the meantime anyone cycling through will continue to have a safe but temporary arrangement. I crossed under the A44 motorway and into Stevenshof, a suburb of Leiden which I have written about before here. I spent several hours exploring this neighbourhood until it was time to check into my hotel on the other side of Leiden.

Distance: Approx 35km / 22 miles
Time: Approx 3 and a half hours
Photos taken: 579
Map of the route
Gallery: 64 photos here

An analysis of this trip by Jitensha Oni:

Monday, 11 January 2016

Cycling between cities in the Netherlands - Part One: Hook of Holland to Rotterdam

If you've ever been on a cycling trip to the Netherlands then chances are that you'll have passed through The Hook of Holland, or Hoek Van Holland to give it its Dutch name. You don't even need to leave the port itself before you access a traffic free cycle route; just cross straight over the railway track and onto a cycle track alongside the ferry port. However, just like the previous two occasions I've alighted from the ferry here on my bike I opted against spending a fortune on breakfast on board and instead grabbed some food from the main street in the town. The last time I cycled along the short road from the port to the town centre I had to share it with motor traffic until a short, and poor quality, tiled cycle track allowed me to bypass the junction. I was delighted to see that this road had since been upgraded with new cycle tracks on both sides of it. Once I was back in the UK I checked google earth to see that the entire road had actually been rebuilt a little to the west of the old one.

This rebuilding of the road doesn't just improve conditions for people cycling but with continuous pavements installed across the side road junction and tiled roads replacing plain tarmac roads has made it safer to cross the junction on foot, along with slower motor traffic speeds.

It would be hard to see an upgrade of this kind happening in a similar town in the UK, certainly the most we could hope for would be the type of improvements that are currently being built along CS1 in Hackney, such as raised tables at the junction and speed cushions but almost certainly no actual provision for people cycling, with people expected to just cycle directly in front of lorries also coming off the ferry. As I would see again and again on this trip this was just one of many examples of how the Dutch continually improve their road network to make them safer and more pleasant for people walking and cycling, rather than concentrating so much on motor traffic speed and capacity.

There were also some roadworks taking place on one of the streets by the main square in the town centre where the worn out tiled road surface was being removed and replaced by a smooth new tiled surface with the pavements also being repaved. I hadn't noticed this before but I realised the main road through the town is one way for cars, despite being wide enough for two way traffic. Bicycles are exempt from this of course and can use the road in both directions. This combination of one way motor traffic flow to reduce the amount of through traffic and subtle traffic calming measures is one of the reasons so many choose to cycle here; it's not just about protected cycle tracks on the main roads. I sat here for just a couple of minutes eating my croissant and drinking my coffee but saw a man cycling with his young child alongside and a man riding a cargo bike whilst walking his dog, both down the main street of the town. This port town is a little more than a hundred miles away from the British port town of Harwich I'd sailed from but it seemed like half the world away, not a close neighbour. Once out of the town the tiled road gave way to tarmac and so did my time of sharing with motor traffic as a two way segregated cycle track appeared alongside the road (with pleasant hedges separating me from the noise of the traffic). This continued until I was once again south of the railway tracks and alongside the sea on a road with fairly narrow painted cycle lanes, although the road lead to a dead end so is clearly not used by through traffic and therefore I did not encounter any motor vehicles whilst I was cycling along it. It then continued for around the next four miles as a bicycle and pedestrian only road alongside the railway line, a very pleasant stress free journey, with just the odd roadie overtaking me and me overtaking the odd person jogging or walking their dog.

Not a bad way to spend a Monday morning, certainly better than dodging the lorries and cement mixers on Hackney Road, as I would a week later

I passed through the town of Maassluis, although kept to the bicycle road for most of my journey through it and so did not interact with many inhabitants or their motor vehicles. I did cycle over some nice cycle infrastructure that would go on to feature in the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain's good cycling facility of the week just a couple of days after I passed over it. I then came to the end of this path and onto the main road in the town, which of course had it's own cycle infra alongside. I briefly stopped at the train station to admire the cycle parking before continuing my journey along the main road leading out from the railway station towards the A20 motorway. The cycle track and pavement looked so smooth and new that I was pretty sure it must have only recently been upgraded, a quick look at street view on google maps confirmed this but I was pretty surprised at just how much change to the road layout had taken place here.

See this location on google street view

The previous layout, with its old tiled cycle tracks, looks quite safe for cycling and certainly much better than anything in the UK however the signaled crossroads here had been completely ripped out and replaced with a roundabout with no traffic signals, with three lanes of motor traffic on approach reduced to just one lane. I can imagine that had you cycled along here on the old layout there could have been a lengthy delay waiting for a green light, especially if you were turning left and would have had to wait twice to do so. This is now a junction where cars always give way to both bicycles and people crossing the road on foot no matter which direction they are travelling, meaning no need to waste energy stopping and then starting cycling again through this junction, with benefits for pedestrians as well.

Many cycle campaigners often campaign for roundabouts to be replaced with crossroads, due to the risk of collisions between motor traffic and bicycles but as can be seen here this is not a clear cut solution and sometimes replacing crossroads with roundabouts can lead to safer and more pleasant places if they are designed as well as this one has been.

The road continued onto the A20 motorway intersection but the cycle track drifted off to the right to avoid the intersection altogether and take a much quieter route under the A20 instead. I then cycled along a very pleasant road alongside the motorway which had a tiled road down the middle of the carriageway to slow cars down but anyone cycling cycling had smooth asphalt cycle tracks in both directions.

I also only saw one car using it, presumably as most traffic opted to use the fast motorway alongside instead. This then became a normal quiet country road passing the other side of a motorway service station, then a painted cycle lane on the road (and my first chance to use a cycling bin) followed by a no cycling sign; I was initially puzzled about where to go from here until I could see that a two way cycle track continued on the opposite side of the road. This track was good enough to be used by horses and was also an impressive distance from the road alongside at points. I then crossed back under the A20 to again be south of the motorway and then alongside a dual carriageway road, burgemeester Heusdenslaan in the city of Vlaardingen. This cycle track seemed to switch between smooth tarmac and not-so-smooth tiles. A couple of days later Mark Wagenbuur would tell me that any cycle track with tiles would probably have been constructed pre-1990 so hopefully this will be upgraded at some point to a lovely smooth red cycle track. Although the tiled cycle track was perfectly fine to use, certainly better than having to share with the lorries on the dual carriageway as I would have had to do back home, which just seemed ludicrous now, even though I had only been in the country for a couple of hours. I then once again passed north of the A20 and back to some nice smooth cycle tracks between Prinses Beatrixpark and the motorway. I then passed through a crap, car dominated industrial area but was of course accomodated on cycle tracks, which although not that remarkable, I stopped to take a picture and post my first tweet from the country

Two hours in the Netherlands, totally stress free cycling so far. Lovely. pic.twitter.com/AaJ2euWeMB
— Hackney Cyclist (@Hackneycyclist) September 21, 2015

As I had only had a croissant to eat so far and I had cycled a fair distance I was suddenly struck by severe hungriness and had foolishly not packed any food. Although I normally avoid Mcdonalds and their awful food the one thing I could not avoid seeing was their huge sign high in the air trying to lure drivers in from the motorway and ring road alongside. Concluding that I was unlikely to find any other food outlets in the immediate area I made a quick detour to grab some breakfast. The food wasn't great and the coffee was terrible but it solved my hunger issues and gave me a quick caffeine fix. The most remarkable thing about this Mcdonalds was that despite it being mid-morning on a Monday and located in an industrial area directly next to a motorway and the ring road it had plenty of bike parking and it was all being used, with many people coming and going by both car and bike. Crossing south of the motorway I crossed over several slip roads where I encountered my first bit of Dutch road rage as two drivers aggressively tried to access the same motorway slip road at high speed, beeping their horns at each other. I gradually climbed up a hill on a cycle track to cross over the ring road, a cycle track which would again go on to feature on the cycle embassy of Great Britain's website just a few weeks later. I was then on a two way track and used a floating bus stop that had a number 38 bus stopped in it, which briefly made me think of Hackney. I was then into the suburbs of Rotterdam and used several one way cycle tracks which all looked pretty similar and, where space allowed, bent away from the carriageway at side roads, something CS2 could learn from. These tracks took me right into the centre of Rotterdam and a lovely recently reconstructed area outside of the main train station with wide cycle tracks in the centre and a fun route under the station. After meeting Paul James for coffee I made the most of my first day and spent almost six hours slowly cycling and exploring many parts of the city.

Distance: Approx 31km / 19 miles
Time: Approx three hours
Photos taken: 224
Map of the route
Gallery: 27 photos here

Next Post: Cycling from Rotterdam to Gouda via Delft