City Centre cycling on a Saturday

Riding into the city on a Saturday is fun. The town is always full of bikes, and in the spring (i.e. now) and summer it can be quite hard to find somewhere to sit at the pavement cafes.

We generally ride along the bicycle road shown in the video as it provides the most direct route from most places west, and it's very pleasant to ride along. There are generally no moving cars at all because it's not a through route for cars.

While you only see a small part of the route in this video, the bicycle road extends most of the way out to the new development Kloosterveen which is 4 km to the west. There are other videos featuring parts of it here, here, here and here.

This route was created over the winter of 2007/2008, including building the bridge part way along which carries the dual carriageway outer ring-road over the cycle path and other bridges which cross the canal. While the work was carried out, cycle routes were preserved by building temporary bridges.

41% of journeys in Assen are by bicycle.

Just before making the video I'd stopped to take this photo of a Rabobank Cycling Team car, parked on the other side of the canal. It's one of several team cars often seen in the area, along with many professional racing cyclists of course.

All too often people dwell on the utility cycling in the Netherlands, but it's only one of the many types of cycling which are popular.

Kloosterveen is the location where I made a video showing Children Cycling to School which has been viewed nearly 20000 times. We have many more posts about Assen, and you can see photos of how the city used to look.