Sunday, September 16, 2012

By bike to the Floriade

The Netherlands is famous for its flower production and every ten years the country organises a world horticultural exhibition. This year it has been held in Venlo just over the border from the German province of North Rhine Westphalia. (If you fancy a quick trip to the Netherlands it still on until October 7. ) Judith is a keen gardener and so it was obvious that we'd should go. We went last week and decided to stop in Straelen just over the border in North Rhine Westphalia. We are rewriting our Rhine 2 guide and so it seemed a good idea to combine a trip to look at new types of garden forks, bird houses and rubber boots with an investigation of the cycle routes in the Lower Rhine region.

We had the bikes with us in Straelen and discovered that the town had laid out a cycle route to connect with a Dutch cycle route to the exhibition. Taking public transport to the exhibition and return using a collective taxi to the station in Venlo and the bus to the Floriade would have cost us €14 a piece, so taking the bikes was quite attractive. We followed temporary signposting into the Netherlands. Finding the the exhibition once we crossed the border was easy we just followed the signs painted on quiet country roads.


There was adequate free bike parking available:


Our guesstimate was about a thousand bikes:


The exhibition was excellent and we enjoyed our 32 km trip there and back.

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