Bike Touring Netherlands: Round Trip Blauwestad & Leer
welcome back to wannagobiking, so I am near Blauwe Stad uh more on that later because i'm a bit of a hurry i need to catch a ferry and i don't have much time so i'll just get going for now and fill you in later alright see ya so how's that for a name? Hongerige Wolf: Hungry wolf ,what a good name right i am on my way to Nieuwestatenzijl, which is at the border between holland and germany and then i am going to have to do a little race to catch a ferry which runs at one o'clock and uh yeah i should be able to make it but it's a strong headwind again so we'll see how it goes well first of all i have to cross hungry wolf i hope i'll survive but we'll see all right here we are : Nieuwe Statenzijl. I really love that piece of art up there makes it look like there's not much wind but i can tell you there is some looks like I'm in time for the ferry so that's good well that was the ferry. funny enough i had to wear a mask which i didn't bring so it was a bit a bit awkward but i made it to the other side i think i've got 25k of headwinds now but i'll i have all the time in the world now so i'll just take it easy all right let's see what's on the road oh quite a contraption well apparently the gate is closed can't open it ah well gotta look for an alternative route but as you can see i'm on my old garmin 820 which is nowhere near well has no re-routing capabilities to speak of really but my Karoo 2 will be back to me in a few days time i sent it up for repairs to hammerhead and uh because the the barometer was it was broken and if uh well they've replaced it so that should be a lot better because that one can actually uh re-route on the fly this one certainly is crap at that yeah let's find a detour a nice little harbour right i think it's uh 15, 17km to Leer and a few stops along the way right time for a little pause let's see where i am actually. just left Tergast well that's the way to Leer, Leer roughly translates as empty so yeah or in Dutch actually would be leather so there there you have it um yeah so today's route is going to be about 106k now that i had the year the ferry in time i've got all the time in the world so uh yeah i can just take it easy i'm not sure if there's many interesting points along the route but uh well if there are you're the first to know all right see you in a bit what a lovely little tree alley this is a nice bit of shelter from the wind so i'm about 7k or so away from Leer, there should be some some place to open for for a drink i hope it is easter sunday so i'm not sure but we'll see fingers crossed ah okay los Geht's ! how cool is this so how cool is this you can get fresh eggs and fresh milk from the machine over here lovely brilliant idea well let's see how long it takes on the train would have passed and the gates have been opened again this is germany things are more torough right here we are in Leer, the harbour of Leer and not even that many people about, more birds than people well let's see if we can find something to drink, Eis Kaffee oh that could be something let's check that out well i know there's uh four castles here in the city centre of Leer and unless i'm very much mistaken, Haneburg would be one of them. if this is not a castle i don't know what it is that's Leer, I think i'll come back and do a more proper look at the city because it's quite nice but for now it's 20k to back to holland again to Nieuweschans Bad Nieuweschans and i'll tell you more about that when i get there so see you in a bit so today is the sunday of Paris-Roubaix so it's only fitting that i'll be doing some cobblestones as well and uh let me tell you i don't like them these are of course very very easy i would say they rate like a zero on the one to five scale in Paris - Roubaix but yeah it's not my cup of tea anyways uh let's move on see ya the river Ems again 20k down that way it flows into the Wadden sea so yeah nice well we've had a few interesting names today we've had Hungry wolf Leer aka empty and here is uh well actually i'm not going to pronounce that one you can look it up yourselves right it's about 5 or 10k to the netherlands i think and the wind is more in my back than i thought so maybe it's turned a bit in my my favor so it should be nice right see you later here we are , Nieuweschans or as it's now called Bad Nieuweschans well there will be some running water here as this is a spa town maybe the only one we have in the netherlands so this town is originally called Nieuweschans but they've added Bad in front of it because the Germans have the same thing you know if you see a town in Germany that starts with BAD uh bath but then you know that's a spa town or wants to be a Spa town and uh i have no idea where the actual spa part is if it's even publicly accessible but i'll just have a quick stroll through the little little village and then make my way back to to the start so yeah so now leaving a bad Nieuweschans on my way to Blauwestad yeah i'll tell you more about Blauwestad when I get there. Blauwestad actually means blue city so uh it's basically a lake with houses so it's blue city all right, see you there some i'm closing in on Blauwestad, blue city was which was one of those mega projects that were doomed to fail from the start because people thought that predominantly rich people from the from the west would come here and buy houses because house are quite a bit cheaper here and you would have more land uh to go on the side as well but hardly anyone bought houses well what they first did was they created this artificial lake and built houses alongside or wanted to build houses alongside but then demand was not what they hoped for and we had a bit of a crisis in 2008 i believe so that didn't help but lo and behold now these houses are now sold like like crazy um because people realize that they can work from home and go with has proved that you know you can work remotely most of us can anyways so um they're now in high demand and also because the house price prices in holland are completely ridiculous i think if you have a very small apartment say 60 80 square meters in the west country you could probably sell for 500 000 euros something like that it's absolutely bonkers and for that you can buy a nice villa here and have a boat on the side so it's going to be far away from many things so that's not everyone's cup of tea but i think you know if you're about to retire it might still be a good thing or if you're you know with family anyways i'm now driving to a bridge which i think is the largest cycle bridge in europe at 800 meters so let's just check check out that bridge well still room for a few houses if you're interested not too shabby longest cycle and pedestrian bridge of europe 800 meters well the name of this bridge is Pieter Smit who used to be the mayor of the Oldambt which is where we are and he was a very popular mayor i've been told but he passed away at a very young age very unexpectedly so i think it's fantastic they named this beautiful bridge after him. so yeah i think we'll have to take the drone out to see it properly right?
well that was yet another very nice ride not as scenic i think as yesterday's when i was a bit more south also in Germany but yeah very nice ride of course the weather was even better than yesterday still a chilly wind but yeah i really enjoyed myself so i hope i can edit this into something viewable if so please give it a thumbs up and like and subscribe and all those things but at any rate enjoy your rides and stay safe out there and I'll see you in the next video alright cheers bye
2022-08-05 22:50
