My First Cycling Adventure (without photos)

Or otherwise titled: From Zutphen to Venlo via Germany and Belgium

I know that some of you will find this interesting and others less so therefore it is entirely up to you if you read this or not. Others of you will need an atlas/map to understand what I am talking about.

We (Martijn's mum Deborah and brother in-law Marco and myself) set out on the bikes from Zutphen. Martijn decided to ride the first 10km with us in his socks (he didnt have any appropriate shoes). The journey went something like this:

• Head west towards the border
• Once over the border turn south and just ride around a bit through all the villages
  
• Find a river that continues to run south
• The river goes through mountain ranges
• Follow the mountain ranges over to Belgium
• Head in a northward direction and at the foot of the mountain ranges you reach the "hilly" part of The Netherlands
  
• Find a river that you can follow north west back to where you started

That was it. For those who are really interested and want to look things up, here is another (more detailed) summary per day:

• Zutphen (NL) --> Winterswijk (NL) 26km via Vorden and Borcolo
• --> Xanten (Ger.) 82.5km via Rees
• --> forget, maybe Gützenrath (Ger.) but it was 80km
• Rest day
• ... 80km
• ... 35.1km
• --> Hallenthal 35km
• Hallenthal --> Monchau --> Hallenthal 55km
• --> Butgenbach 38km via Udenbreth, Scheid, Losheimergraben
• --> Ternell (Bel.) 50km via Champagne, Robertsville, Olifat and Sourbrodt
• --> Epen (NL) via Kelmis, Vaals
• --> Mastricht --> Epen 49km
• --> Laak (NL) 57.7km via Gulpen, Scheulder, Sibbe, Valkenburg, Beek, Stein, Urmond
• --> Venlo 59.3km via Echt