Tent on the bike, backpack on the back, and for about six weeks nothing but stairs, due to weather and wind. Lonneke (40) cycles through Europe for weeks. What she did not find anywhere else in the world was that typically Dutch bicycle board. It reminds her of all the adventures she has experienced and of the feeling of coming home. And so she had that bike immortalized on her wrist.
When Lonneke got old enough to go on vacation independently, she grabbed the bike: “I don’t find it so exciting to get in a car, then you don’t get much of the environment,” she says. “I usually set off for a month and a half, and I crossed different borders. My then sleep and I did in a tent on the way, so it was always a big challenge to get all the stuff with it. Fortunately the tires carry the most weight.”
For example, she cycles hundreds of kilometers per vacation, through weather and wind, although during her very first cycling trip she first looked up the sun: “We flew to Bordeaux, because it was raining in the Netherlands,” she says. From there she cycled in six weeks to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. “It was so incredibly hot, we drank liters of water a day.” And those Spanish mountains are not tender: “straight up and straight down. Then primordial cries came from me,” she laughs.
Since then she had a taste for it. From her front door in Olland near Sint-Oedenrode, she cycled to France in four weeks, or through the hills of the Ardennes. The last trip she made was to German -speaking Belgium. “I was ten weeks pregnant at the time,” she says. “I thought that will be fine, because I am used to cycling, but man I had underestimated that,” she sighs. The first three months of pregnancy are often the hardest. “I really had no strength in my legs.”
Once there was no campsite in the area where they cycled and they had to go more than a hundred kilometers further until the next one. They were very afraid that we could no longer be allowed to take it by the time we arrived, but luckily they were received in a friendly way. “Apart from a few flat tires and a lost bicycle bell, we have never had any bad luck,” says Lonneke Vrolijk.
“My six -year -old daughter says she’s going to cycle around the world with me.”
Since she became a mother six years ago, the long cycling holidays have been paused. And so she had the bike put out of the typical Dutch traffic sign on her wrist. “It stands for coming home. As soon as you cycle back in the Netherlands and you see that plate, you know: I am there. You don’t see him anywhere else.” It reminds her of the journeys she has made. “Especially because I dared that, that go beyond the beaten paths.” That literally means: “In Spain you simply cycle next to the highway, that is only exciting.”
Her six -year -old daughter already has the taste. “She says,” Mom, we’re going to cycle around the world! ” Well, I am just happy with the Netherlands and Belgium.
And if that doesn’t work out, then there is always that sign on her wrist. “It also shows that cycling is a privilege, that I am healthy and can be from home for weeks to make a trip. Moreover, it is a nice metaphor for life: to keep balance, you have to keep moving.”