Biking through the Hoge Veluwe

In the middle of the Netherlands is a big beautiful national park full of woods, heathland and sand dunes. Formerly the hunting area of the Krüller-Muller family, rich art collecting industrials, the Hoge Veluwe is now a delight for nature-loving tourists. Since we had to be in the area anyway, we had taken the advantage of bringing our bikes and to go and explore. Once arrived we learned we didn't even need to bring our bikes: at the entrance and many other points in the park white bikes are available free for use.

The park entrance is not free (7 euro + additionally 7 euro if you want to visit the Krüller-Muller museum) but it sure is worth its price! There's lots of trails to take for bikes, walks, horseback riding, ... and of course there's guided tours as well.






Unfortunately the wildlife (red deer, mouflons, wild swines, ...) seemed to be convinced that it was better to leave the humans alone on their trails and to not disturb us in our natural habitat so they remained in hiding.

Comments

Jen said…
Do all of your National Parks have admission charges? Ours do, but you can also get passes to get into all of them.
Korie said…
That looks like a pleasent place to bike. No cobblestones and no hills.
Goofball said…
@Jen: no idea really, it's not like we have a lot of impressive national parks :).
There's one relatively new one "nearby" Leuven but it's really woods and nature scattered in between the many villages that got consolidated and protected but there's no true "entrances" so there it is free.

There's a national park in the Ardennes but I don't think you need to pay either. Only at the coast there's a Belgian/Dutch park at a river estuarium/dune flooding area and that's payable but it's a park with fine accomodations.

@Lilacspecs....check out that 3rd picture: those are ups and downs in between dunes. The hills look tiny but are therefore more tricky as they are so sneeky. Most of the uphill patches are not clear uphill and therefore you get up on them in the wrong gear and wonder why all of a sudden you don't progress anymore and you are breathing so heavily...ah dugh it's a sneeky uphill patch again ;)

So yes of course no big hills but it's not quite flat either. It depends what you are used to I suppose. I surely was happy to ride my own bike with different gears as opposed to the free white bikes without gears.
anno said…
It looks beautiful! Too bad about the respectful absence of deer or a mouflon, but the lack of wild swine -- known to be both fast and vicious --was probably for the best.
Brian Miller said…
based on the pics well worth the price! would have been nice to see the animals though.
rozebril said…
Ik neem mezelf dus al jaaaaren voor dat ik eindelijk Nederland eens beter wil leren kennen, maar het komt er precies nooit van. En nu zie ik deze prachtige foto's weer... ik zou zó vertrekken. Binnenkort nog eens een weekendje ofzo...
JennyMac said…
This looks like a perfect place for a bike ride.
Betsy said…
That's really weird! We were there on the 6th!!! Were you there on Sunday! I wonder if we passed you somewhere on the way?

(I was going to ask you if you remembered a large group of really LOUD Dutch people, but heh heh, you probably saw your share of those along the way... ;-) )

I love the Hoge Veluwe!!! Will post some pictures maybe tomorrow. Kroeller Mueller is one of my favorite museums ever, but we didn't visit it this time...

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