July 15, 2007 -

Part 2 of my regular Sunday morning thrash, and its quite popular with the natives, too. From about 10am onwards the roads fill with day-trippers so an early start is recommended. This is quite crazy! Its a 25km sea-dyke right across the ijsselmeer, no junctions (well, just one, to the marina about 1/2 way across, plus a few pull off and have a look parking lanes) great visibility*, wide road that you can really cut loose on, or just cruise and enjoy the experience of riding so far from land. There are a few gentle curves in the 3/4 of the run, but nothing you really need to slow down for. The two biggest hazards are 1) that you have to stop every 10km to get the bugz off your visor & 2) there is a danger of getting a seagull in the face - you see a corpse every couple of kM. The last few kM are fun. There is a long sweeping right thats smooth enough to make you feel like Rossi on the parabolica followed by a long, long left, a short sprint to a hard 90 degree right, then an uphill 180 left that you can fast at the top, accelerating smoothly. A nice way to finish the run is to sprint about 1km toward the end of the dyke, then turn around in the carpark before the bridge and do the 180 again as a downhill right hander, which is way more tricky, then brake hard at the bottom and take a hard left into the picnic area wherein usually sits a jolly decent snackvan (coffee and kibbling, mmm MMMM) run by a dutch hot-car freak who speaks perfect english. I wont claim this run is as good as any in my beloved lake district but for around here, it satisfies the red-line fever well enough.