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Last weekend, we braved the coldest winter for 30 years in Holland to go winter camping.

Well…. it was cold! Last week temperatures were down almost to -10°C at night but a spring thaw was underway by the time we dragged our bikes out of the house on Friday morning. Things had warmed up and all the snow was gone, at least in Den Haag. As you can see, we are still using our $100 Bikes, happily purchased from the second-hand shop a few months ago.

By the time we got to Amsterdam, the snow was back on the streets. All of our fellow cyclists were bundled up, ready for a cold night. The prediction was for temperatures around -5°C. Everyone planned on camping.

We started out with a tour of Amsterdam, on the city’s extremely well marked and extensive cycle paths. The Amsterdamse Bos, a wooded park south of the city which we rode through, has 48km of cycle paths alone.

The days are short and soon we were setting our tents up at last light in the campground.

Andrew had to drive our tent pegs through the snow but the ground was surprisingly soft underneath.

We laid thin foil mats on top of our normal 3-season Thermarest mats for extra heat. We also had a third sleeping bag to pull over us. During the night, we could definitely feel a little cold coming up from the ground but we had no trouble sleeping. A few degrees colder though and it would have been a different story.

The next day started with a long delay, as we fixed a flat for a member of the group. The small bit of metal that caused it was a real pain to get out of the tire. It took over half an hour.

Soon we were back on the road and cruising down the beautiful towpaths of Holland.

We finished our weekend with a jaunt through Leiden to the beach (where we also camped but didn’t take any pictures because it was dark and raining!!) and then back to Den Haag.

This weekend we had the great pleasure of hopping back on our bikes again with the Wereldfietsers – probably the world’s best bicycle touring club!

They have 2,500 members and about 50 of them turned up in a small town between Utrecht and Arnhem this weekend to do a tour of the local countryside.

We had never been on a group ride before and we’d definitely never seen so many touring cyclists together in one place so when we got off the train and saw dozens of other cyclists with the same interest, we couldn’t stop smiling! We also couldn’t help noticing that almost everyone had Ortlieb panniers and that there were a large proportion of Koga and Santos bikes. These guys are serious about their cycle touring!

Soon we were zipping down the well-paved bike paths of The Netherlands.

Some of our most beautiful riding was through the woods. We didn’t realize that you could find so many unpopulated spaces in Europe but it was like this for miles and miles on end.

The open moors or heide were something else we didn’t expect to find in this part of the world. It felt like we had been transported to Yorkshire, England.

On Sunday morning, the mist was thick and we wondered if we’d get to the train station before the rain set in. The forest looked almost haunted with the clouds filling all the gaps between the trees.

The mist soon lifted and we enjoyed a morning of riding through more forests, on some quite sandy tracks. During a short break, our eyes drifted to another common sight in the group: the Brooks Saddle. Our bottoms were quite sore by this point so we vowed to get new Brooks Saddles as soon as possible!

This was the last shot we took, on our way to the train station. We meant to take a photo of everyone before we parted ways but we arrived with just a few moments before the next train so everyone broke up quickly, rushing to get home.

Many thanks to the Wereldfietsers for a great weekend out!