CYCLING THE BROWN DIVIDE ROUTE

A wise man once told me: ”A plan is not the goal itself - but without a plan, it's not going to work out anyway.”

And so we made a plan: Willem, Laurens and I, Stefan, will finally ride the Brown Divide, the gravel route designed by Erwin Sikkens, that connects about every green area of Holland. Biking. But make it Live Slow style. Because it's the off season. In two days. Starting in Naarden, finishing in Zwolle. The goal: to get ourselves on the bike again, all geared up, ready for anything, not knowing where the journey will end. And that's where the problem started: “We will see where the journey will end.” And thus we left. A bit too late in the afternoon, but we left. And the universe was on our side: fresh new bike bags by Tailfin, shiny Diverges to sit on. And the sun was shining. Harder than she ever did in October.

Day 1 ended in Wageningen. More precisely: in a bar called De Vlaamsche Reus. One of the very few bars on the route, as Willem had pointed out already, so we had to get there. And we did. Wageningen on a Thursday night. Buzzing is maybe not the word we are looking for, but there was a lot more going on than we had expected. No better feeling than entering a packed bar after a long ride in the dark, wearing your spandex shorts and with the sweat on your face. We indulged ourselves.

Kwaremont beer on tap. A place to sleep offered by newly made friends. A bowl of peanuts. A great night. All went well. It was the type of night that gives you enough energy to keep going. It was that good, that we woke up the next morning with a satisfied feeling, a nail in our heads and, well, not that much fire anymore to continue our ride. 

 
We did leave Wageningen of course, after we had a breakfast at the local supermarket and stacked a bag of 'pepernoten' in our bike bags. And we did make our way through the muddy tracks of the National Park De Veluwe. But you know what the thing is? If you start a ride with three guys, and everybody is hungover and there is not one person making sure that there is absolutely no room for discussion about the ambition behind the journey, nor about reaching the destination, you are basically screwed. Or better yet, you know right at the start: this is going to be a DNF. And it was. 

Despite the beautiful route, the ride, the weather, the amazing light, the continuous flow of bad word jokes, the astronomical amount of calories, that were taken in and the never ending weird situations, we never managed to reach the destination of the Brown Divide - Zwolle. Wageningen became our Waterloo. Arnhem our final battle. Zwolle a bridge too far. It's always nice to have a plan, even if it is only there to give you a reason to change it. This was the most fun DNF ever.