Ride Tilburg to ’s-Hertogenbosch

This week’s video is a long ride from city hall in Tilburg to city hall in ’s-Hertogenbosch. I filmed this ride last autumn on November 17, 2023.

I did not take the shortest route because that would have meant cycling 13 kilometres alongside the very busy four-lane road N65. The shortest route would have been 24.5 kilometres. Instead, the deliberate detour via Oisterwijk and Haaren was 26.5 kilometres. A route that was just 2 kilometres longer, but which meant I only had to cycle for about 3 kilometres alongside the busy N65 road. That sounded like a great deal.

The route I took and a summary of distance, time cycled and average speed.

The first part of the route from Tilburg to Oisterwijk was known to me. I cycled it a number of times before. It is a great rural route, one of the example intercity routes from the 1970s cycling infrastructure experiment in Tilburg. However, the route from there and through Haaren was not very attractive. The narrow but separate one-way paths next to roads were even better than the kilometres-long 30-kilometer shared route through the village. Those village streets had way too many cars, in my opinion.

Then there was the 3 kilometres next to the busy road, which was as noisy as I expected. The town of Vught then threw in an extra detour for roadworks. I was glad to leave the traffic noise behind me for the final leg to ’s-Hertogenbosch completely away from motor traffic.

All in all, it was a very easy route to cycle the 26.5 kilometres at a reasonable average speed of 20km/h. That was again mostly achieved thanks to the fact that the cycling was almost non-stop.

The route from Tilburg to Oisterwijk is excellent. This was part of the 1970s experiment of high quality cycle routes in Tilburg. The path was well maintained all those years.

Close to Oisterwijk I met these people on a side-by-side bicycle enjoying the autumn sun on this excellent cycle path. Note that there is lighting for the cycle route, not for the car route to the left of it.

In the north of Oisterwijk there was this short stretch of on-street cycle lanes on a 50km/h street. Not according to the latest design recommendations, but fortunately this was the exception rather than the rule.

I added this picture to show that I do signal! You can see my right arm strecthed out to indicate that I will turn right here on this rather old-fashioned tiled roundabout.

A rather narrow cycle path here and very close to the rest of traffic. The boys cycled very close together, but I really wanted to pass them. Before that was possible we got into a scary situation when they suddenly swerved to the left to go around a patch of mud on the cycle way that they had obscured, so I had not seen it coming. The boys thought nothing of it. While I was passing them one of them suddenly gave me his honest opinion on chocolate: “Sir, milk chocolate is the best!” he shouted. I agree, but I failed to see why that needed to be mentioned right there, right then.

The long route through Haaren was on a street like this with way too many cars to my liking. It seemed to take forever. Even though the speed limit was 30km/h I thought this was a very unpleasant type of infrastructure given the traffic volume of cars.

Most of the rest of the route was on one-way cycle paths like these. The man on this machine was kind enough to steer completely out of the way for me and even stop completely. Thank you very much!

I had missed the warning for car drivers (inset) that this is an “equal intersection”. This means the tractor coming from the right has the right of way. Which it also literally says on that sign: “[traffic from the] right, has priority”. I thought I was on a priority road, but I had missed that there were absolutely no visual clues to support that view. The tractor driver must have had this before, because he let me go first. I only realised my (potentially lethal) mistake when I rewatched the video. Maybe a warning on the cycle path as well would be appropriate here.

I did end up cycling alongside the 4 lane N65 road after all. Very busy, very noisy, very few other people cycling here. I was very happy I decided to not cycle the full 13km like this, but that I had chosen the 2km longer detour to avoid this road.

Finally away from traffic again. Instead of many cars there were many cyclists again on this part of the route. People really try to cycle away from motor traffic!

Entering ’s-Hertogenbosch from the south. From here it was only a short stretch to get to the city centre where today’s tour ended.

This week’s video a long ride between two cities in the province of North-Brabant in the south of the Netherlands.