Netherlands

Self-supported bicycle trip in

The Netherlands - 2023

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Day 9 - Thursday

Today we bicycled 23 miles from Otterlo to Amersfoort.

Before heading to breakfast at our hotel in Otterlo, we checked the tire pressure and cleaned the drive trains on the bikes, adding a little lube. Both bikes picked up some sand and dead leaves in yesterday's ride, so we shook what we could out of the fenders.

Before pedaling away from the hotel, we stopped at a school yard across the street and looked at a sign listing the top five wild critters in the Otterlo area - elk, sheep, fox, buzzard, and wild swine. Though we have not seen these animals, we saw plenty of evidence of the wild pigs along the trail. They really tear up a lot of ground in their rooting for food around trees and other places.

The weather was gray and cool when we started off, and pretty soon it began to rain. At first it was only a light sprinkle, but when it became a "real rain," (seven drops on a brick!), I stopped to change from my lightweight windbreaker to the rain jacket. This kept my top half dry and warm, but the bottom half was pretty well soaked. As long as we kept riding, I was warm enough.

We came upon a field of flowers in bloom, and there were a sufficient number of them in neat rows that we presumed it was a crop. Shortly, we could see places where the plants had been dug up and arranged in small shipping crates. They were rhododendron plants.

Our planned route was much shorter today, so we had looked around for a stopping point about midway through the route. This was in Barneveld, and fortunately, there was a very good place to stop - the Dutch National Poultry Museum.

We pulled into the museum parking lot, parked our bikes and went inside. We dripping water from being soaked by the rain, so we first asked where we might hang our jackets so we wouldn't drip water all over their museum. The woman who greeted us was very helpful, responding to our questions in English and then giving us sort of a brief orientation to the museum. She even went off and came back with a museum guide - in English.

We found the museum very interesting and spent nearly two hours there. It is a sprawling set of buildings which houses live chickens - examples of nearly 30 different Dutch breeds - and artifacts and exhibits explaining the history of poultry production and husbandry from early medieval times to the present. There was even a section on poultry husbandry, with a model illustrating two chickens in the reproductive act as well as several small cases with hatching chicks in various stages. In one of them, I could see that a chick was not yet emerged from the shell but had already pecked an opening and was working on enlarging a hole. In the same case were other chicks which had emerged only minutes earlier, judging by their general state of wobbliness.

We made our way through the exhibits, none of which had any English explanations, but we could usually get the gist of the information being relayed. Shortly, we were joined by a museum volunteer, Gert Wouter Bouwman, a retired university faculty member and former teacher at the Barneveld Poultry Husbandry School (which is apparently very well known in the Netherlands and probably also among poultry producers in other countries, too). He accompanied us through more of the exhibit, offering very interesting explanations and detail that we would not have otherwise have understood. It was fascinating. We learned nearly everything one would want to know about chickens.

At the end of the tour, we joined a small demonstration of the Dutch auction system - a method no longer in use for the poultry industry since large producers now operate on a contract basis. But until the early 1990's, eggs and chickens were sold in an auction house at Barneveld, where the price was determined when the buyer pushed a button to stop the "clock" that was rotating and counting down toward a minimum price. If no buyer pressed a button before the minimum price was reached, then the item was not sold and the seller would have to take it to another market or try to bring it back to the next auction in Barneveld (when of course, it would not be as fresh and would be competiting against better products).

Mr. Bouwman made a fun game out of the auction for us and three other gentlemen who were there for the demonstration, and he auctioned off a small case of eggs and little souvenirs. We didn't bid on the eggs, of course, not being equipped to enjoy them, but we did come away with a couple of souvenirs small enough to fit in our bike bags.

Before we left the poultry museum, we stopped by their little cafeteria and had a bit to eat. We each had a bowl of chicken noodle soup (!) and a regional specialty called the Barneveldspritse, which I could only describe as a crisp buttery gingerbread cookie. It was not as spicy as a gingersnap and was buttery enough that it almost had a toffee flavor. Very nice! The kind woman who had greeted us upon entry to the museum had explained that it was something that we would find only in Barneveld, so we knew we wanted to try it. I have not yet found a recipe for it online, but I'll keep looking.

From Barneveld, we pedaled on to Amersfoort, where we entered the old city on the northeast side, riding along the old city walls. Amersfoort lies on the River Eem and has a moat around the central walled city of the town, which has a canal running through the middle of it. It has a lot of character in its central streets, and it is easy to imagine how it may have looked five or six hundred years ago.

When I was reading about Amersfoort prior to our trip, I read about the "Amersfoortkei," or the Amersfoort Boulder. It's an amusing story about a 17th-century prank by a man who bet his friends that he could convince the locals to drag a boulder from some distance into the town. He managed to do it by providing the locals with some beer and rousing them up to the challenge. They willingly brought the boulder to Amersfoort, but upon realizing that they were now the object of ridicule, they later buried the rock and it was more or less forgotten until 1903. That's when other locals, recalling the story, dug up the rock and turned it into a local attraction, which is still true today. The boulder is prominently displayed on a pedestal at one of the city's busiest intersections. When I read this story, I thought that this town truly has some fun-loving citizens who can see the humor in a story even when the joke is on them. I knew that we needed to stay in Amersfoort and go see the boulder.

After stopping to see the boulder, we wound our way through the streets to the old city gate at Koppelspoort - where the River Eem comes in to the town and fills the town moat. There we found a picturesque bridge and a stone arch gateway, through which we rode to our hotel.

We easily found the Lodgement de Gaaper, our hotel next to the central marketplace, and a friendly host helped us check in and even carried our heavy panniers up the steps to our room. We stashed our bicycles in a nearby free bicycle garage and went back to our room to shower.

For dinner, we opted to enjoy a meal at a restaurant directly across the marketplace from the hotel - De Professor had a nice selection of some local beers on tap and a menu that was more than sufficient.

After dinner, we walked back to the Koppelpoort to see it illuminated at night. Sunset comes rather late in this part of of Europe, and it was nearly 9:45 before the street lights came on. We took a couple photos and then strolled back to our room, crawling in bed around 10:15. Tomorrow we have another short ride - from Amersfoort to Utrecht.

Leaving our hotel in Otterlo

Sign listing the top 5 wild animals found near Otterlo

In Otterlo

The cars get an unpaved, sand road, but the bicyclists get an asphalt-paved trail

It was rainy this morning on the trail from Otterlo to Amersfoort

A crop of rhododendrons

Rhododendrons ready for shipping

We stopped at the National Poultry Museum in Barneveld and spent a couple hours there

A rooster - from one of several Dutch breeds one can view at the museum

At the National Poultry Museum

Colorful rooster at the National Dutch Poultry Museum

Exhibit showing the reproductive act of chickens

Chicken anatomy

Labels for the chicken anatomy (previous photo)

A Diploma from the Barneveld school for Poultry Husbandry (includes how to sex the chicks to select the female chicks for raising laying hens)

Newly hatched chick (I need my coffee!!)

Microscope for sexing chicks - the "old" way of sorting them

Gert Wouter Bouwman, museum volunteer and retired university faculty member, explaining how the auction worked

We learned how to interpret the code printed on eggs - "2" means the laying hens were kept in a "Scharrel" (cage which allows more movement), "NL" identifies the country of the producer, and the other numbers are a code for the farm where the egg was produced.