Day 4 of Biking:  Destination – Harderwijk, Netherlands.  Today’s Mileage:  35.6 Miles

I was determined to take the shorter route today, but Mike wanted the longer one again.  It was really only about 7 miles more anyway… and we both are feeling like this is good training for our return to the Mississippi later this fall.  

We started out winding our way through the streets of Kampen.  Our route took us Kampen’s other city gate.  We hadn’t looked for it on our last night.  

The day was a mix of riding through forests and small villages and towns. It was all interesting to see as we rode along, but not easy to capture in photos.  

We took our first break at a town called Elburg, which I found quite charming.  We first arrived arrived by biking along a harbor area.  Next, we found ourselves at the entrance gate to the town. Elburg was given town status in the early 1300’s.  Toward the end of the 1300’s, the entire city was rebuilt/updated and for the most part, that is the city you can see today.  In the 1600’s extra moats and taller city walls were built -because of the “modern” war techniques of that time.  Elburg relied on farming and fishing until around the time of WWII.  Around that time, the country decided to dam up part of the nearby waterways and, over time, the dammed up water became fresh-water, which took away the fishing industry.  By the 1950’s the town realized that tourism was going to be the thing that would keep it going -and it has become a very popular tourist town in that part of the country. 

We stopped and parked our bikes, thinking that we’d take our break there.  This is a picture of the gate and the bridge leading to it.

After a short break, we entered the town through the gate and noticed a sign that no said bikes weren’t allowed to be ridden down the main street.  So we walked our bikes for a few blocks.

They were having a market day and it was interesting to walk our bikes through a few blocks of a very busy pedestrians only business district.  Our route turned right about half-way down the main street.  I took this picture of a side-alley after we turned.

Before we knew it, we were leaving Elburg behind… but not before taking a picture of one of the lions guarding that road into the town.

For most of the day, we just kept pedaling… We were in and out of conservation areas and small neighborhoods.  After one of those, we were passing by farms and saw a convenient bench on the side of the road. Break time!  

Another example of road signs for bicyclists.

I was keeping an eye out for some sort of convenience store so we could get a cold drink, but we never really saw one.  We were getting closer and closer to the end of today’s ride before we finally spotted a Jumbo grocery store.  We stopped and I ran in to get us a couple of cold drinks while Mike watched the bikes.  

After that, we were looking for one last spot to take a break, but the parks we passed didn’t have benches and there weren’t any random benches along the way.  We were entering the outskirts of Harderwijk, and finally we just pulled over to the side of the path and stood in the shade of a tree for a quick break – the boat was really only about a mile further along, but we both just needed to get off the bikes for a minute!  

We arrived at the docking area, which is definitely in an industrial port area for this town.  It isn’t scenic, but it was great to be pulling up next to the ship! 

We do tend to just pedal and not dilly-dally most days, but knowing there was a shorter route today, we were surprised to be the 2nd & 3rd bikes pulling up to the ship.  The first bike was an E-bike -does that count?  HAH.  We kept wondering where everyone was because we assumed that most of the passengers took the shorter route.  We’d only seen a few other passengers during the day on the route.  We found out later that some people that arrived before the ship had followed a “side” route to a more touristy area nearby.  I took the below picture after everyone was on the ship for the day.

Here is the written directions for today’s ride:

I accidentally picked up the German version for today. With our GPS units, we didn’t really need the daily route, but we liked having it as a back up plan.

Categories: Part 1: Netherlands Bike & Barge 2025, Part 6: Kampen to Harderwijk