Mountain biking

The official Apeldoorn route is 50 km long, and for much of that 50 km you are cycling on sand. Not much tarmac, and if you do it at the end of a dry summer, a lot of loose and difficult patches. In case you are not familiar with it; cycling through dry sand is like cycling through powdery snow. That means hard work on the uphills and some skill required to keep upright on the downhills. By the time you get back to your stating point again, if you are not feeling some tiredness in your legs you must be very fit. But that was in August, after a bit of rain I am sure that the trail will be quite fast and then the 50 kms will fly by.

The route goes through some beautiful woodland, mostly mixed broadleaf, and there are some spectacular views across open sandy heath.  Rather surreally you come across the art nouveax Radio Kootwijk building in the middle of one such heathland.  It was built in the 1920 to maintain radio contact with the Dutch colony in Indonesia, initially with Morse transmissions and later with short-wave radio.

The route officially starts in Apeldoorn, but if you are coming from the south you can also park in Hoenderloo for instance.  The signposting is excellent (August 2013), although watch out that in a few places the signposted route does slightly differ from the GPS route.