Holland Part 4 - Largo

I'd finally arrived at my destination only instead of taking my estimated "just over an hour" and arriving at 15:00ish, I had pulled up outside the front door at around 17:15. This was no problem as check-in goes on until 23:00 but the problem it did present was that I had missed the order time for a hot meal and free coffees. Once again my Dutch hosts were to restore my faith in humanity when I was told in the bar that although I had missed the evening meal there were probably a few bits and pieces left over and that I was welcome to have them at no charge. I hope I don't get anyone into trouble for saying that but it was sheer bliss to tuck into a huge mound of sauteed vegetables, garlic wedges and lo and behold, there was one piece of pan fried chicken with a mushroom sauce that was, at that moment, perhaps the greatest meal I'd ever eaten.

Bliss...

I retired to the bar for a couple of excellent Jopen beers and my personal favourite Palm before the overpowering urge to sleep came over me.

"It's a new dawn, it's a new day...and I'm feeling good." Next morning, feeling refreshed after a hot shower and excellent breakfast in the dining room I was out on the bike into the sunshine.

I did have a quick look around to try and find my error yesterday. Naturally as soon as I got to the main road I started to recognise features from Google Streetview and of course very quickly found the turn off I had missed the previous evening that had led to a less than magical mystery tour of the district of Velserbroek about three km off course. I needed a completely stress free day so decided against any long bike rides to anywhere, despite my room-mate offering me a lift to a big market he was intending to visit somewhere near Ijmuiden, I instead opted to cycle into Haarlem and just chill.

OK, I would at this point suggest if you're not interested in cycling infrastructure then what follows may seem to be a series of rather dull photographs and descriptions of paving stones and roads but it was one of the reasons I chose to visit, so...

Haarlem is by all accounts a fairly standard Dutch city in terms of cycling infrastructure and yet with one exception on the day I arrived, I never felt ill at ease let alone in any danger from being mangled by speeding motor traffic, even on sidestreets, or rat-runs as we call them somewhat depressingly in the UK. Before I start posting pictures if streets, let me make one thing clear, in the city of Haarlem there is a smattering of this stuff.

Shared use path for cycling and walking

Yes indeed it's the UKs favourite shared use path. Now here's the thing, I travelled quite a few Km over three days using a mix of these paths and segregated bike paths, sometimes sharing with other bikes, sometimes pedestrians even dog walkers didn't present too much of problem. I don't know if it's just me but it seemed that by designating a path through a park as a bikepath it somehow had more validity than the variety of  things that crop up in the UK. This was only a path through a park which led to a canal at the end of which was a junction crossing a wide, busy road.

Fairly typical junction, green light delay for cycles

The junctions had a delay to allow for bicycles to get a head start on motor traffic. Even with segregation this is really essential to prevent bicycles being "right hooked" by turning motor traffic. I'm no traffic engineer but the layout of junctions and the provision of segregated paths seemed entirely logical once I started using them, even as a pedestrian it took no time to figure out what was going on.

Haarlem has plenty examples of pretty good, pretty poor and, in my opinion, exceptionally good cycling infrastructure. Without inducing too much tedium, check out the good:

Complete segregation from motor traffic

 The not so good:

Looks familiar...

And the "yes, that's the way to do it"

Now THAT's an underpass!

Were it not for the fact that so many other people have written screeds about this stuff I would go on and on. The interesting thing for me was how quickly I started to judge the merits of one section of infra from another. I was only there three days but within hours I was thinking, "well that's a pretty good idea" or "wow that's an improvement on the UK", to the wow, "why can't we do this?" response. Indeed the road right outside the hostel had absolutely no segregation between bicycles and motor traffic but didn't seem to phase anyone particularly despite the local buses driving through at a speed I thought I wouldn't be comfortable sharing with.

Right outside my accomodation, no segregation here

In truth I DID use this road and had no issues, in fact the place I did feel uncomfortable was, unsurprisingly, the painted bike lane labelled "Looks familiar..."