Mountain biking

The Netherlands is internationally famed for its overwhelming flatness, but there is one part for which that is not true, right down in the south of the country, there is a relatively narrow 'finger' sandwiched between Belgium and Germany, called South Limburg (or Zuid-Limburg in Dutch). The hills are still not as large as the Ardennes in Belgium a little further south, but in a couple of hours cycling you can notch up 6-800 height meters, which is not bad. What is more, the landscape is a treat.

Much of it is rolling pastures with twisting country roads (very different from the straight lines everywhere else in the country) and little villages nestling in the hills. The underlying rock (a novelty in itself, much of the country just has sand or peat under the soil) is chalk, which means that there is a diverse flora and so also a lot of insects and so on. On one cycle ride I saw at least eight different butterfly species.

The landscape also has a more ancient feel to it than the more constructed landscapes further north. There are a lot of hollow roads, formed by a combination of natural features and centuries of use, with trees arching over the top to make a complete tunnel in some cases. The network of mountain bike trails makes good use of these tracks, many of which are rough and steep. There are eight official routes in the district, as well as a few close by just over the Belgium border. The Dutch routes can be found on http://mtbroutes.nl/ and the Belgium/Flemish routes here: https://www.sport.vlaanderen/waar-sporten/sporten-in-de-natuur/mountainbikeroutes/.

Here is an overview of the Limburg routes:

It is well worth downloading the GPS routes from those sites as some of the signs are hard to see or missing due to fast growing vegetation (nettle-proof gloves are also useful!) and vandalism. Some have more tarmac than others (not a problem seeing it is mostly pleasant back roads and you can regard it as recovery between the tougher bits) and some have more hills than others. The hills are often steep (up to 20-25%) and difficult (depending a bit on the weather) with loose pebbles and rocks (though it must be said that the photo below was a 'short cut' on one of the Belgium routes).

The general consensus on mtbroutes.nl seems to be that the Epen route is the best one. It is indeed a super ride, with lovely diverse woodlands (photo below), including the Vijlenerbos, famous for its wild cats), some difficult hills and little tarmac.  However, my favourite was definitely the Voeren route (blue+black), which you can start in the village of Mheer (in the Netherlands) but is otherwise virtually all in Belgium. That has a great combination of gorgeous scenery and challenging trails.

For some reason I've been tired all week, so this weekend I skipped getting up in time to go with the club and instead had a bit of a trundle round the woods on Sunday morning. A couple of weeks ago it was really warm and since then there has been and awful lot of rain, so everything had grown enormously. The bare sand of a few weeks ago has transformed itself to small forests of Impatiens parviflora with its pretty little flowers (below) on the sides of the track and Polygonum persicaria where there has been some standing water. All the dense green vegetation means that the woods have quite a different feel to them than a few weeks ago.

Last weekend, it was that time of year again; time to help out with the 'Hell of Ede-Wageningen'. This year we had a completely new route, unfortunately due mainly to increasing unfriendliness of landowners where we used to go. That meant a huge amount of work for those planning it. There were also one or two puzzles for those of us helping putting the arrows out, like the spot below where it splits and which way you go depends on not only if you choose for the shorter or longer route, but also if it is the first or second time that you reach that point. You would imagine the sign below would be so clear that no one could make a mistake, but there were still some people who were going so fast that they didn't have time to think about it before taking the wrong turn.

Over 850 people took part in the tour, so that was a great success, and we heard a lot of positive remarks about the new route. It was a long day helping out, with an early start and 70 km cycling (despite our bit to sign only being 5 km long), but all in all very worthwhile.