Biking in The Netherlands – 08 – Leiden to Gouda

[Categories: Travel, Photography, Travel Photography]
[This series of posts is about our recent 3-day sightseeing plus 7-day Bike & Barge, Holland:Tulip Tour in the North and South Holland Provinces of The Netherlands.]
[See a list of all posts currently in this series HERE.]

Wednesday 22 April 2015. Biking Day 4. A lot of countryside biking for which I do not have a lot of photographs. Major village/town stops today are Boskoop, Gouda, and Waddinxveen. (Plenty of photos for these.)

Gouda is a real treat. More on that later. Everyone has heard of Gouda cheese haven’t they? Remember I spoke about those Dutch pronunciations? Of course many of us ‘Mericans pronounce Gouda as ‘GOO-da’. To the Dutch it is ‘HOW-da’, as in ‘HOW-da heck are ya?’. Fancy that. I’ll stick with ‘GOO-da’ in the U.S. and ‘HOW-da’ in the Netherlands.

Today’s route:

On the road to ‘HOW-da’ (Gouda) we are waiting on a drawbridge in Hazerswoude-Rijndijk. It seems like there are fifty shades of drawbridge in the Netherlands.

More.

If memory serves me (?!?) we stop at a senior’s home/cafe for coffee and a pastry. (Shades of future present!) Sorry, no picture. On we bike to Boskoop.

This map by the church is the kind you can get to navigate the walking and biking paths.

The church in Boskoop.

Our bikes racked by the church.

More Boskoop.

In Gouda (keep thinking ‘HOW-da’) we stop between the Sint-Janskerk (St. John’s Church) and the Gouda Museum.

More.

We stroll through the church on our own for a short while as later we have an in-depth guided tour. Then our guide takes us to a cheese shop and the Town Hall.

GOUda cheese!

Town Hall.

More!

Our tour of the church includes the beautiful stained glass portrayals of Bible stories and patron symbolism. As our guide notes the windows were the picture books for the illiterate masses of the time.

At 123 meters this is the longest church in the Netherlands.

Beautiful painted stained glass.

MORE.

We are supposed to stay overnight in Gouda but a freighter has hit a drawbridge and blocked passage of our barge. We bike back to Waddinxveen to meet the barge and see the broken bridge:

A bridge not too far, and not high enough this time.

Dutch engineering is on the job. Thankfully our barge was not trapped on the other side else we’d be staying in Gouda many nights!

Biking distance today is 27.2-29.9 miles, longer due to the back-haul from Gouda. HRM says about 9 1/4 hrs and 3600 kCal. I need that calorie burn because… you can’t call me late for dinner.