‘It is so typical Dutch’…. is what I hear a lot! Look right, look left…. Look right, look left again….beware, they come from all sides, keep looking when you cross the road! We Dutch people are so used to cyclists and riding a bicycle that we are not surprised anymore. Almost all Dutch people learn to ride a bicycle at a young age and go to school with them from a very young age. For us cycling is just like walking, so we don’t wear helmets! (But you can, when you join me at a Bike Tour through Hoorn 🙂 )
The bicycle is our workhorse
We use our bicycles mainly for practical purposes: to take the smallest children to school, to do some shopping, to ride to work, etc. From the age of 10, our children cycle independently to school and we send them on their way with peace of mind to do an errand for us. And we never fall! When you ask an adult Dutchman when they last fell, you usually get the answer: ‘What a strange question, I don’t think I’ve ever fallen in my whole life!’ Here is a link to a funny video in which expats talks about the Dutch and their bikes: watch video!
Bike tour through Hoorn and historic villages
The bicycle is also a great means of transport to discover more of the surroundings of Hoorn. Especially now that electric bikes are for rent and available everywhere. Especially for foreign guests I have developed a great bike tour. This bike tour takes us through Hoorn and a few beautiful villages in the immediate vicinity. We pass a classic Dutch windmill and in spring we pass extensive tulip fields. We drive over a historic Dutch dike that the Dutch started to build in the middle of the 13th century.
