Family Biking Denver Hits Holland!

Our family spent a month of this summer in the Netherlands, at a farmhouse in the province of South Holland. We spent much of our stay entirely car-less, using bicycles and buses to get around. After failing to find a workable trail-a-bike option, we went with a rear-mounted seat for our five year old. Our son turned eight on our trip, and utilized a kids' bike with 24 inch wheels.

The first thing I would like to say about family biking in Holland: it is not for novices. I was expecting everything to be flat, what with all the canals and sea-level spaces. I quickly learned that flat landscapes do not require flat infrastructure. Some of the canals are higher than the land surrounding them, and canals are everywhere. Consequently, steep climbs up to narrow bridges occur frequently. If you're thinking about taking a family cycling trip in the Netherlands, try to find bridges near home that you and you family can use for practice. Once you get good at crossing one at a time, try crossing together and finally crossing in opposite directions at the same time. If you give your kids less than a foot of space on this final maneuver and you both stay calm, you're ready to cycle rural Holland!

You'll ride your bicycles over a bridge like this.

When you aren't navigating bridges, you'll probably be on a bicycling path or bicycle lane. It is important to know that motorized scooters are allowed in these places as well as on the road, and the drivers often explore their options while going the speed limit. That said, once I got over my surprise at being passed on a bicycle lane by a miniature motorcycle, I noticed that the drivers were overall quite courteous and usually gave us more space than passing cyclists.

Cycling through a nature preserve (time lapse).

So, on your left you'll have traffic of some sort— either cars on a street or scooters on your side of a hedge— and on your right you'll often have a steep hill down to water. That doesn't leave much room for error in terms of steering, but I was surprised as anyone that our kid actually seemed to do better with these constraints than he did on the wide streets at home. Maybe it was the separation from opposing traffic, maybe it was that he couldn't let his mind wander too much, maybe it was the clear delineations between the asphalt bicycle space and everything else, or maybe it was simply the innate adaptability afforded by childhood. Regardless, we never had a kid careen down a grassy slope into the drink (thank goodness).

A typical trail in Holland, with a canal on the right.

The South Platte cycling trail in south Denver.

Our son seemed in his element during Utrecht's evening rush hour. The flow of cycles felt a lot like the flow of water in the canals; as long as you knew which way you wanted to go, you just followed that stream of cyclists, did what they did, and ended up where you needed to be.

An eight year old embracing Utrecht rush hour. Not a car in sight.

Utrecht's famous bridge, as seen from a cycle.

 Most children ride in seats (as our daughter did) or in the famous dutch bakfiets. Dutch students receive bicycle education in fifth grade (which I imagine simply solidifies what they have observed from their parents' cycles for several years). Certainly some cycle independently before then, but almost all do so at fifth grade or older. Packs of cycling teens were very common, and acted much like teens in the U.S. Once, one said "bonjour" in an unfriendly voice to a friend of ours as we cycled. As it happened, our (American) friend was fluent in French and answered back in a fashion that left everyone laughing and the teen somewhat red-faced with shock.

Our setup: youngest in a seat on an adult bike, oldest on his own bike.

Despite the surprising challenges, cycling was a fantastic way for a family to explore Holland. We rode through huge nature preserves that allowed cycles but not cars. Even for distant destinations, there was always a fairly direct cycling route. Once I got used to the unspoken customs of lowlands cycling and the large quantities of cyclists sharing the space, I realized that good cycling infrastructure doesn't have to take up a lot of space or fight with vehicular traffic. A lot of cyclists can utilize a fairly narrow path as long as they are proficient.

Bikes on a ferry = happy transportation wonks. The apple does not fall far from the tree!