To the sea and back in January. A winter ride through Drenthe and Groningen + PPPPPP

We have installed triple glazing in some
of our windows. These ice crystals were
on the outside when I set off yesterday.

Yesterday was the date of the Noordelijke Velomobiel Tocht - a winter recreational ride starting in Groningen and heading to the coast and back.

The distance of the ride was supposed to be around 80 km, but it ended up a bit longer and when I added my ride from Assen to Groningen and back again my total distance for the day was 152 km. Some people came from somewhat further afield, one rider adding about 60 km on top of this.

We've had a mild winter until the last few days, but it was -9 C in our garden when I set off yesterday. The peak temperature in the afternoon was around freezing but it dropped again to -6 C by the time I had got home in the evening. Even with the weather protection offered by a velomobile the temperature does take something out of you if you're out in it all day.

A Dutch scene: Windmill, cycle-path, frozen canal, velomobiles. It's cold but there was no ice on the paths because there's not been any precipitation over the last few days.

One of several stops out in the countryside between the very pretty villages of rural Groningen.

Our lunch time destination - probably the most Northerly cafe on the mainland of the Netherlands

Most people had hot chocolate with apple cake. Significantly higher in calorific content than the vegan alternative of black coffee (more on that later).

Quick stop for a photo on the dyke

A "make your own postcard" view of the sea, with ice.

And then we began the return journey, first heading to the west along one of the roads nearest the sea.

Proper Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance (the knock, the bonk, hitting the wall)
A fabulous day out, well organised, friendly and enjoyable. And yes, while what I'm about to write about might suggest to some readers that I didn't enjoy it, I can assure you that I most certainly did.

Unfortunately, it went a bit wrong for me at the end. All my own fault. The ride back from the organiser's home was in darkness, it was cold and I ran out of energy about 15 km from home. Most people who have ridden any distance will know how this feels. Having run out of available sugar to burn your body tries to keep going by burning fat, but because this is not so easily available you simply can't keep up the same effort. Trying to do so results in feeling quite awful. If you've ever felt like you wanted to vomit during extended exercise this is quite likely why. Depressing thoughts about perhaps never getting home at all can also follow.

There are two possible solutions:

1. Stop and eat something
2. Slow down.

Both options will cost time. Ultimately, slowing down will cost more time if there is a long way to go and the remainder of the ride won't be very enjoyable. For me that was the only viable option  because this came on when I was in the middle of nowhere and pretty much everywhere around here is closed on Sunday evenings so there was nowhere sensible to stop for food which didn't involve a detour. I didn't have far to go so I slowed down to the low 20s km/h and kept going. It's important not to let your body temperature drop and at least I could still work hard enough to keep myself warm.

Luckily I didn't have far to go and I wasn't alone. Three of us were riding towards Assen together. One of them needed to go somewhat further and he wisely kept his speed up and continued onward. Peter and I live very near to each other and he was kind enough to accompany me back to Assen at my speed. I was at no risk of getting lost as this was the last section of my old commuting route but it really helps a lot to keep your spirits up if someone rides with you.

A refreshment stop on an organised ride last summer. A top up of energy drink and food were available at regular intervals. It was also warm. This makes it much easier to cover distance.

It's been some years since I made this mistake and I should have know better. Knowing the symptoms is a good thing as at least you know what to expect and how to react, but I if I had planned ahead I wouldn't have had a problem. I should have had the right food and drink with me, but I did not. I took sandwiches, water, a couple of cartons of soya milk and some snacks. By the time I ran out of energy I didn't have anything left which was attractive and which I wanted to eat. I needed easily available sugar, not a packet of nuts. One more sandwich earlier on might have been enough to address the problem. I should have planned better for a lack of vegan food and drink at our stop in the countryside as that's standard and I should have been more self sufficient. A drink which contained sugar would have been better than plain water. Real sport drinks work well (not the horrible cough mixture flavoured stuff that teenagers like). That could have made a difference but I find it is difficult ever to drink enough when it's cold - because all drinks are cold in your mouth and while feelings of thirst come quickly in hot weather, I never feel thirsty in cold weather.

You live and learn. This was a great day out. I've taken part in this annual ride most years since we've lived here and I certainly intend to do so again. Next time, I'll prepare better instead of leaving it to the last minute !

Sunset in winter

Winter jobs
I've once again fitted Schwalbe Marathon Winter studded tyres to the front wheels of Judy's and my own city bikes. These are the bikes that we ride in any weather over short distances and while our local authority is mostly incredibly good at removing snow from the cycle-paths, there are sometimes little pockets in corners which can be dangerous and a few patches of old-fashioned tiled surfaces are a bit treacherous. For early morning cycling when you can't necessarily see ice, these tyres work as an insurance policy against falling. Schwalbe's Winter and Marathon Winter tyres are amongst our range of recommended products for winter cycling.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Netherlands, people are getting ready for the first ice-skating Marathon this year.

The effect of snow clearance from on-road cycle-lanes vs. off-road cycle-paths demonstrates why off-road paths are superior for cyclists

There are many disadvantages of on-road cycle-lanes vs. off-road cycle-paths. This was well illustrated today when cycling along a road with a cycle-lane on one side and a cycle-path on the other.

Cyclists using the on-road lane suffered from that lane being halved in effective width from the usual 2.1 m to about 1 m due to swept snow filling half the lane. This pushed those cyclists closer to passing motorized traffic.

On the other side of the same road cycling was as safe as usual because the off-road path required sweeping separately from the road and therefore remained close to its usual 2.5 m width.

This road in Assen has an on-road cycle-lane on one side but an off-road cycle-path on the other. Though the separation between the off-road path and the road is narrower than is ideal, this kerb requires that the snow plough driver properly on the cycle-path and cyclists remain properly separated from the traffic on the road. Cyclists travelling in the opposite direction, using the on-road lane, found themselves pushed closer to motorised traffic.

In another location you can see how clearance of this cycle-path was not perfect because the width of the snow plough used was less than the width of the path. However, this still left a perfectly usable bidirectional path which still served to provide cyclists with safer conditions separated from the road alongside which carries motorized traffic.

A few days after the other photos were taken. The temperature has remained below zero for several days now. All the trees are white, covered in frost, and the canal is frozen. The cycle-paths are mostly clear. Wide paths like this, which is 4 m wide, don't tend to be clear to their full width because the snow ploughs are less than 4 m wide.

Find out more

The road at the top also features in blog posts about two other potential problems with on-road cycle-lanes: Dooring and pinch points. In both cases this road provides relatively good examples of relieving these problems, though an off-road cycle-path is generally a better solution. Also see a blog post summarising all problems with on-road cycle-lanes. For positive infrastructure ideas, see all blog posts about good design.

Support this blog. Buy products for winter cycling from our webshop. We use studded tyres on our bikes to greatly reduce the chance of falling.

Sometimes, winter weather is so bad that conditions stop people from cycling, driving and even walking...

-5 C where we live (gr is short for
"degrees" in Dutch). We are warned
of an extreme risk of black ice.

December was extremely mild. In fact, December 2015 was the warmest ever recorded, with no frost at all.

The warm weather continued into New Year's Day, when we went for a very pleasant ride through the countryside, but by the 3rd of January everything had changed. Part way through my ride, I found I was accumulating ice - particularly on my mirror.

On Sunday I had more ice than mirror

Winter has now well and truly arrived. It's "only" -5 C ("feels like" about -15 C, apparently) and we've had much lower temperatures in previous winters, but we've never had such widespread black ice as we have at the moment. There have been many crashes on the roads and that's why there a "code red" emergency has been declared and everyone has been told to stay home rather than risk travel. Even a skating marathon has had to be cancelled because of cold weather.

Of course, when told to stay home because of the weather, some Dutch people see conditions suitable for play, so the local news has been full of videos of local people doing things such as skating along roads.

I find studded tyres help enormously with the usual winter conditions, but in my opinion even they are not really enough to make the current conditions safe. But if you have three wheels (one studded tyre fitted on the back) it's relatively safe to go for a short outing, so that's what I did this morning in my velomobile, taking photos on the way:

I first headed out into the countryside on a small recreational path. It looks quite clear, but actually the surface is like a very rough skating rink. I had to limit my speed to 10 km/h in order to ride in anything approaching a straight line. Not suitable for two wheels.

The same path. Three wheels make it much safer !

On this photo you can see what the surface was like. Cyclists who went along here a few days ago left ridges behind, which have now frozen solid. These grab your wheels and make riding in a straight line dangerous. Everything in-between is super slippery ice.

Heading back into civilization on the same skating track.

"Civilization" turned out to be just as dangerous. These residential streets offered no grip whatsoever.

Main cycle-routes have been swept and salted so these are relatively safe. Some people are cycling - but numbers are nothing like the normal level for Assen, 

In a local shopping centre most cycle-racks are empty and many of those who are here with bicycles are walking rather than riding.

I don't normally go shopping by velomobile, but I did today. It's not nearly full, but this is plenty for us to eat over the next few days.

Main cycle-route on the way home. Snow-ploughs are not quite so wide as cycle-paths so we usually end up with a bit of ice at the sides..

The main routes were mostly OK.

In this case, nearly half the bicycle road was unusable

While here the whole width looked OK, but in some places it was rather slippery. Hence this woman choosing to walk.

Bridges are often particularly slippery because they freeze from underneath. But this one was fine.

Approaching the centre.

Few people had reached the city centre. It was nothing like the busy-ness of the time just before Christmas.

Another person who found walking more to her taste than riding.

More nearly empty cycle-parking

Car parks too were nearly empty too. People are put off driving as well as cycling by conditions like this. This one was particularly slippery and dangerous.

 

A cycle-path which was barely cleared of ice at all, offering very little space for this cyclist to pass the pedestrian (both wanted to use the very narrow surface where there was grip - the pedestrian is not walking on the separate walking path)

Residential street / ice-rink

More treacherous pavements for pedestrians, so these people are on the cycle-path, which at this point is actually OK.

Another walking cyclist.

Completely empty school cycle-parking because the schools are closed. In the past they've remained open and the cycle-parks have been full with much lower temperatures, but that's not realistic with these slippery conditions.

Some paths seemed to be fantastically clear for no obvious reason. This has obviously been swept, but it's not a main route.

Another residential street. Not many cars moved today. Many people have stayed home.

Assen has many cycle-tunnels. Conditions were fine for cycling through this one, and probably so for the others as well as they tend to be on main routes.

After perhaps the slowest 11 km long ride I've ever made, I'm back home. These days it's warm inside without a huge heating bill because we've invested in insulation and saving energy, Our monthly combined gas and electricity bill has dropped to around €50, a huge improvement over the extraordinary amount which it cost to live here when we first moved in.

Later in the day: work to do
There's always work to do at www.dutchbikebits.com and today was no exception. We packed ten parcels for customers in Australia, the USA, UK and here in the Netherlands and as usual took them to the post-office by bike. The usual delivery bike wasn't usable today because of the ice so today's consignment of parcels was delivered by velomobile and trailer:


We use a post-office which is quite close to our home. This video shows the entire distance there and back again by two nearly identical routes.

Later in the day I read the sad news that someone died today in Assen due to the ice. A pedestrian slipped on a street in Kloosterveen, where I cycled this morning for shopping. He fell hard on his head and was fatally wounded. My condolences to his family. Clearing ice from paths, cycle-paths and roads is very important.

Ice cold in Assen

This cycle-path, 200 m from our home, provides a direct
route to the centre of the city. Just like the other cycle paths,
it's been swept and salted. This tight grid of high quality
primary routes is essential to make cycling accessible to all

It felt a little parky when I took our dog for a walk last night and on returning home I noted that  someone had asked me about how we get on cycling in the winter. How cold is it ? What condition are the cycle-paths in ? I decided I'd take some photos today and write a little about this (again).

Elsewhere in the city, a single direction cycle-path also
cleared of snow and ice

On return from the dog walk I noted that the outside temperature was a little below -11 C. For most of the week beforehand the temperature had been hovering around -5 C at mid-day and as I write this it's about -6 C. It'll get colder overnight.

A minor cycle-path, not necessary to use, and un-treated

We've not had masses of snow compared with previous years. About 17 cm of snow (7 inches) fell on Monday. It kept falling all day and though I swept our driveway twice, it didn't much look like I'd bothered by Tuesday.

Simultaneous green crossing in winter. I stopped for red.

During Monday things were a bit difficult because even the most effective of treatments for roads can't deal with snow which continues to fall. However, as soon as it stops the local government does a very good job of sweeping the paths and  treating with what appears to be a mixture of salt and sand.

Main route North out of the city. Someone with a passenger

Main cycle-paths are treated immediately, as are main roads. Residential streets are treated last. Where cars have been they compress the snow and this is more difficult to remove so conditions on some of these streets can remain unpleasant.

This is the same type of vehicle as is used for sweeping
cycle-paths. If the paths are of proper width then you
don't need narrow vehicles.

The photo on the left of a snow-plough going along our street shows how it can be. This was his second pass within 10 minutes. The gritters are switched on and off by computers using GPS. Therefore, they don't waste excessive salt where it's not needed but achieve an even spread around the city, wherever the driver happens to go. Without this, in the past, the area around the depot tended to be treated better than outlying areas.

We still have studded tyres in stock, as well as many other genuinely useful cycling products. There are more stories about gritting and snow removal,