Another trip to the Netherlands, this time to combine some musical events with attending the Tour de Retro cycling event.

We travelled again via the Harwich to Hoek van Holland ferry, and chatted for a while with a young couple who were just starting out on a cycle camping expedition to Istanbul – a daunting undertaking, and we wished them well. Disembarking, we rode on the excellent cycle paths into Rotterdam and then caught the train to Utrecht to stay for three nights. The first reason for this journey was to go to some of the concerts in Het Festival Oude Muziek: the ten-day festival of European early music, i.e. music from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries. By pre-arrangement we also went to Holy Trinity church so that Mrs G could join the choir practice for their Anglo-Dutch choir – apparently Anglican choral evensong services have become quite popular in the Netherlands, as described in Hanna Rijken’s book My Soul Doth Magnify.

Thereafter we took the train to s’Hertogenbosch, and cycled the remaining distance into Eindhoven to stay for three further nights. This gave us time to visit the excellent Philips museum on the site of the company’s original 1891 light bulb factory. A short walk then to find the cycle and foot tunnel under the main railway line, recently decorated with a Ministry of Silly Walks mural.

On the Sunday we joined around 85 other cyclists for the Tour de Retro cycling event starting from De Cyklist café. This year’s event offered 45 or 75 kilometre sign-posted and GPX routes into the Noord Brabant countryside, with a stop halfway at another cycle-friendly café, Borrelbar Kikkerop at Maarheeze.

www.tourderetro.net

This event is not a race or a sportive, and can be ridden on any bicycle, although there were several steel racing bikes (the organisers joke that there are no Retro-police to check the antiquity of your machine). However, it must be ridden wearing a retro cycling jersey – Mrs G was one of five riders sporting the classic red-yellow-black TI Raleigh jersey, while I had a reproduction Frimatic Viva de Gribaldy (France 1969). One of the other participants rode a single-speed Azor and was dressed in the style of early Tour de France. We were blessed with excellent weather, and passed hundreds of others (mainly couples on e-bikes) out for a ride in the early autumn sunshine.

The Tour de Retro is the idea of cycling jersey collector Ton Merckx (no relation to Eddy) – his continuing collection has reached an astonishing 2,800 jerseys.

https://tonmerckxwielershirts.nl/en/about-ton-merckx/

Returning the next day by train to Rotterdam, we retraced the route back to Hoek van Holland for the return ferry. In the check-in queue we chatted to a young man returning from a tour to Amsterdam riding a G-Line Brompton, and who was towing a small trailer that carried his placid Labrador dog passenger. We shared enthusiastic comments about the wonderful Dutch cycle paths.