Sunday 10 May 2009

Promoting cycling at FlevOnice


Last Sunday, Arjen and I went to a cycle promotion event in Flevoland. It was at the FlevOnice facility, a unique in the world place with a 5 km long outdoor artificial ice-skating circuit. It's obviously not reasonable to keep this thing frozen during the warmer months, so it turns into a tarmac circuit for other purposes in the spring. We were at the first event for "Mei Maand Fiets Maand" ("May Month, Bike Month"), an annual bicycle promotion event. That there is a lot of cycling already in this country is, after all, no reason why more shouldn't be promoted.

Flevoland itself is the world's largest artificial island. I find it fascinating. It's a vast area of land which used to be the sea bed. Draining it has resulted in hundreds of ship-wrecks now being on land, and it's protected by dykes built on an enormous scale (including this one which I cycled over last year). There are no buildings older than the 1960s on Flevoland, and three new cities: Lelystad, Dronten and Almere which were established in the 1960s and 1970s and consist only of modern architecture arranged on modern lines - with plenty of cycle paths of course.


As we were there representing Sinner Ligfietsen, here is the company video presentation showing the bikes, including some glimpses of how they are built.

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