Gelre ziekenhuis tour

The tour has been running for 13 years, and I took part in quite a few of them, though not by any means all. We have had mixed weather for them – the one year when it was so wet that we reputedly had mud up to our axles is burnt into our collective memory, but this year it was pretty perfect. Not too warm and not too cold, all of five minutes of light rain, and most importantly of all, enough rain in the past week so that the sandy ground was still damp enough that we could cycle across it despite the severe drought in the summer. There were a couple of places where we really had to do our best, and one long stretch across some dry sandy heathland where it was really hard work and I saw a few people walking their bikes. My back was complaining by the time we had got across that and I was glad that the strong wind was behind us in that open area. We saw one cyclist on a e-bike with normal tyres, so I think he would not have stood much chance there.
The route was really well chosen, the broad forestry tracks were avoided as much as possible, and there were lots of really pretty singletracks through the forest. In fact, in general the tour was very well organised (as usual), with good security for the bikes whilst we checked in, coffee at the beginning and a decent lunch at the end. I must say that the break was a little disappointing. There was no coffee, and only one small piece of 'ontbijtkoek' (gingerbread without ginger). A shame if you had just spent the previous half hour (or even five minutes) looking forward to your coffee.
The GPS file, provided to help with navigation, was handy, as the arrows were the same colour as autumn leaves, which was occasionally not ideal, although there were at least two sections when the GPS track was wrong. The GPS said that we had 325 m of climbing but my bike computer reckoned it was 545. Despite the fair weather, it was quite hard going on the whole, so I'm more inclined to believe the higher figure. As usual, Roeland cycled faster than me uphill and I could catch up on the downhills, although in the last 10 km or so he was having to wait for me. I think the reason was that I foolishly decided not to bring my rucksack. I thought that with being able to fill my water bottle at the break, that would be enough. It wasn't – I was thirsty at the end, with an empty bottle.
In the end, it was the landscape that made this such a great tour. We were allowed to cycle some trails that are normally closed to the public (the military practice shooting there). The heather was flowering more spectacularly than it has for years (apparently it likes baking hot summers with a damp end) and the forest seemed to have completely recovered from the drought and was looking lovely (unlike round here, where it is looking more sorry for itself).Read more