Holland cycle touring for newbies

[Grldtnr]

Thanks for putting me right, but I am not a native, just my experience from my last time there, back 5 years.
But you cannot deny the Dutch are switched on about integrated transport, cycling is a massive part of that.

[Psamathe]

...
You must use the cycle routes, cycling on the roads is frowned on, you will be firmly told to get of the roads,and on to the paths, which isn't a problem , the paths mostly go directly, where as to drive you likely have to detour to get to the same place....

Depends. e.g. quite a bit of LF Waterlinieroute is on roads (though so quite they might as well be cycle paths). Also depends on what you are riding as to "mandatory" cycle paths being mandatory. e.g. On by bent I have the option to use roads even when there is a mandatory cycle path.

Sometimes drivers will hoot you. I deliberately cycled on a busy no cycling road in Lelystad once ('cos I didn't like the detours for cycle route and I was tired/being lazy) and every car does toot you but not a single "punishment pass" from any car - it's not an angry "get-off" (as would probably happen in the UK) but more a notification that you're doing wrong.

You see quite a lot of carbon/lycra on the roads even with a mandatory cycle path - some such cyclists have told me they don't want to mix with slower cyclists, joggers, walkers, etc. (can't get record Strava segments around sit-up-and-beg riders and joggers).

Ian

[djb]

My wife and I toodled around there last summer and I highly, highly recommend getting the Fietsknoop routing app. It's incredibly easy and intuitive to use, you put in your start town, where you want to finish the day, and it calculates all the bike paths and junctions to turn at.
Each junction point, a knot, or "noop" , has a number, and at the junctions a sign points which path to take to get to 23, or 60 or 44 or whatever.
Super easy to use, I just noted down the sequence of junction points and kept an eye out for the sign posts.

We booked b+b's mostly, and it wasn't too hard to find spaces, although we were there a bit before busy season.

Very cool place to bike tour in, I'd go back and explore other areas.