Fiets Podcast 008: Riding ‘Round Rotterdam

Hello and welcome along to the latest edition of the Fiets Podcast. My name is Ben; I’m an active travel advocate from Nuneaton in Warwickshire, and you can find me over on Twitter: @BicycleBenUK; over on Facebook, facebook.com/BicycleBenUK; over on Mastodon, mastodon.online/BicycleBen; or over at the website, fiets.uk.

This is a podcast that’s all about cycling, active travel, sustainable travel, and speaking about what’s been going on with a specific focus on the local area, Nuneaton, Warwickshire, Coventry, branching into Leicestershire, but also the wider UK as well. But I’m also going to speak a little bit this time about my own cycling experiences and what’s been going on with me out on the bicycle over the last roughly a month since the last edition of the of the Fiets Podcast, and specifically also my adventures over in Holland.

Riding ‘Round Rotterdam

I say adventures; I mean, I was cycling around Rotterdam for a little bit while on holiday for a few days back in August. And of course, if you go on holiday to somewhere in the Netherlands, when you’re as interested in active travel, sustainable travel as I am, of course cycling has to become part of that trip somewhere.

And I did hire a bike in fact, the family hired bikes from one of the local bike shops or bike rental places in Rotterdam. My wife decided to hire out one of the OVFiets, the national bicycle hire scheme that’s present in the Netherlands. Now, you might ask yourself, why didn’t I use the OVFiets? Why did I go specifically to a bike shop to hire something a bit more specific? Well, the OVFiets is a great scheme. It’s right by Rotterdam Centraal Station, it’s easy to get to, it’s inexpensive, and if you know someone who’s got a card to get you access to that scheme, then that’s really great. But as a tourist it’s a little bit more difficult to get hold of one of those bikes. But also, they use a slightly different braking system to what we’re used to in the UK; you back pedal to brake on one of these bicycles. There’s no brake levers on the handlebars that you might be used to if you’re cycling in the UK. And due to my unique way of cycling, which comes about because of a knee problem that I have, back pedalling is not an option for me. So, unfortunately on two counts, OVFiets cycle hire was not available to me. But it’s not a problem. There are bike shops – I know of at least two places to hire bicycles from in the immediate vicinity of Rotterdam Centraal Station. So, it’s very easy to go and get a couple of bicycles from me and the boy.

So, do that we did, and I got myself a three speed hub-geared town bike, a city bike. A very easy to ride thing, very, very simple, comes with what you’d need. It came with a rack, came with mud guards – not that I needed mud guards; it wasn’t raining, but still – and it’s perfect for getting around the city. It’s not a high speed ride by any stretch of the imagination, but that’s not what I wanted. I wanted to explore Rotterdam. And this holiday wasn’t about going out on the bike and exploring Rotterdam by bike. It was a family trip to visit family over in the city, but I took myself out on a couple of occasions just to do a little bit of a solo explore around the centre of Rotterdam to experience the cycle infrastructure and what’s good and what’s bad about the city.

And I’m going to emphasise that second point because active travel advocates on Twitter will speak so often about the wonderful cycle infrastructure that the Netherlands has. And we’re absolutely right to do so. The Netherlands has some fantastic cycling infrastructure that means that I can cycle happily in an unfamiliar city and not worry too much about cars and traffic and all that, and I can take the boy out on cycle rides in this same city. But Rotterdam is not the pinnacle of Dutch cycling infrastructure. That’s been pointed out to me, but I also know that. I know that other places in the Netherlands are likely to be far superior to Rotterdam, and I believe – I haven’t experienced it myself – but I believe Utrecht to be one of those places. And that’s somewhere that at some point, I do want to go and visit.

But Rotterdam we visited because, as I say, we have family in Rotterdam, so that was the place I was going to experience cycling infrastructure. And I think it’s a good place to experience cycling infrastructure as a Brit.

Rotterdam was described coincidentally, not long after I got back, on a Facebook post from the Dutch Cycling Embassy, as one of the most American cities in the Netherlands. So, it’s been historically designed or evolved at least to work around driving and the car.

This is a problem that we’re familiar with in the UK. Cities have been designed around cars, towns have been designed around cars. Rotterdam was the same. And we know historically in the Seventies that the Netherlands started diverging away from designing cities and towns primarily for the car. They had their movement to prioritise or increase the priority of cycling and active travel. And we’re maybe at that same point that the Netherlands were at fifty years ago.

Rotterdam is one of the cities that maybe has lagged behind the likes of Utrecht and probably other places as well, but you can see how it is evolving. And one key place you can see it evolving is a major city centre thoroughfare called Coolsingel. The Coolsingel thoroughfare is a massive thoroughfare. It used to be four lanes of motor traffic, but it got changed. Four lanes of motor traffic, two in each direction, became one lane of motor traffic in each direction. It takes tramlines, it takes a very comfortable, bidirectional cycleway, and it has very generous pedestrian space as well. So, this was one of the first places that I wanted to experience on the bike, a thoroughfare that had been changed, that had decent quality infrastructure put in place for cycling.

I’m not sure the exact width of the cycleway on Coolsingel – I didn’t get my tape measure out and measure it – but it’s a bidirectional cycleway and it was comfortable. You could easily enough overtake people if they’re going a bit slower than you, other people can overtake you if you’re going a bit slower than them, there’s no feeling of intimidation or pressure or being limited in space if you’ve got people coming in the other direction. Now, I will caveat this and say I didn’t do this during rush hour. So, maybe it was a quieter time. But still, it was a pleasant place to cycle, it was safe, there were minimal opportunities for conflict with cars, you have traffic signal controlled crossings to again, reduce that conflict, tram crossings were all very, very clear – it just works. It’s a prime example of something that’s up to date in standards and works really, really well.

And the other thing that’s good about this particular piece of infrastructure from a comparison, on an evolution point of view, is that it doesn’t go all the way up to the river – at least not yet. I don’t know if they have any plans to expand it. But you can tell very much where the new infrastructure ends and the old infrastructure takes over. When it does so, you move into a single direction cycleway – although I did see people going the other direction in it, but you know, it’s fine; it’s a little bit narrow and a little bit cramped for that sort of thing but there’s no real pressure. But you can tell when it gets narrower, that it’s just not quite the same. But it’s designed as single direction, so it would be narrower, but it’s just not quite as comfortable at that particular point.

Other pieces of good infrastructure – well, you have the bridges over the river. You’ve got Erasmusbrug and you have Willemsbrug. Both pretty old bridges now. Twenty-five-plus years old is Erasmusbrug, and Willemsbrug is even older still. But they have the infrastructure there to take cycles over the river. Willemsbrug could perhaps do with a little bit of a resurface, if I’m being honest. It was a little bit bumpy in places. But again, you’re fully separated from motor traffic getting across the river on these potentially busy roads.

But it’s not all fantastic and I think it’s good to highlight the fact that even in the Netherlands, things aren’t as good as they could be. Things are still evolving, things are still changing.

I took another ride. This time I went a little bit north of the centre, north from the river up to a place called Hillegersberg, but taking this different route along main roads was almost like being back in Britain actually, where we have painted cycle lanes in door zones that offer no protection against motor traffic. Some traffic that passed was heavy goods vehicles or construction traffic vehicles, and it just wasn’t as comfortable. And I remember thinking to myself, as I was going along here, if I had The Boy with me at this particular point – and bear in mind, the boy is nine years old – if I had him with me at this particular point, I would be significantly less comfortable than I was on the separated infrastructure that is maybe a little bit more prominent as you go from the centre, south of the city.

Traffic levels were lower than maybe you’d experience in equivalent streets in Britain, but again I will emphasise the point; I’m not travelling at rush hour. So, maybe that’s not a fair comparison. Speeds are perhaps lower, okay, so maybe a little bit less intimidating. But if you’re in a collision with a large lorry or a construction traffic vehicle, even at twenty miles an hour it’s not good. You’re going to come off worse. We still have vehicles parking in cycle lanes, impatient drivers cutting across, close passes – it’s the usual things.

So, the problems that we experienced when we cycle in Britain on our bad infrastructure or non-existent infrastructure, are not specific to Britain. And of course they’re not. Why would they be specific to Britain? The problems are the same in the Netherlands. Where you have bad infrastructure, you will feel uncomfortable, you will feel more at risk, you will feel more exposed.

Cycling in Rotterdam also had the additional hazard of tram lines. Crossing tram lines when you’re travelling in the same direction as those tracks is hazardous. You don’t want to get your wheel caught in the tram line. Now, you might just say, ‘okay, well, don’t pull out over the tram tracks’, and fantastic, yes, brilliant plan, until a van driver decides to park their van right in your path and you have absolutely no choice but to pull out into the main motor traffic area, crossing tram lines. So, there’s an additional hazard there.

So, these hazards, they exist in the Netherlands, and of course they should exist in the Netherlands because we’re not fundamentally different as people. It’s not that drivers are going to be fundamentally different in this part of the world than in this part of the world. But it’s good to see that experience is the same there, that where you don’t have that separated, high quality, safe cycling infrastructure, the problems that you experience all of a sudden are very similar to being back at home. It reinforces the concept that in Britain, by putting in the same type of cycling infrastructure as is so ubiquitous across the Netherlands, that we will see the same benefits that they see, over here.

I have high hopes that Rotterdam will keep improving things for cycling. You know, with the advent of Coolsingel that was developed only a year or so ago; the refurbishment of the Maastunnel which I also went through, to make things more comfortable for cycling again with brighter lights and a better surface – if they’re doing that work there then hopefully improvements will spread out throughout the city as well. So, I have hopes that as I keep going back to Rotterdam, that maybe I will see new cycleways develop.

But that sense of relief that you get once you’ve been cycling on the non-existent infrastructure side of things, just on painted cycle lanes, that sense of relief as you cross back onto protected cycleways, that moments where you just feel like you can relax. You’re no longer at risk. If you need to stop, if you need to slow down, if there’s a mechanical problem, whatever it is, the only other people you’re going to come into conflict with are other cyclists. It’s a very, very different situation to being in conflict with drivers.

So, all of this is just to say, it might not all be perfect in the Netherlands, but where it works really well, let’s copy it. Because it really does make a difference. My wife said to me, unprompted, it is so much easier – not in the sense of physical ease because the place is flat, but in the sense that she doesn’t feel under pressure from motor traffic. It’s so much more relaxing – I suppose that’s a better way of putting it – to cycle in the Netherlands than it is to cycle at home. And my wife, she’s not the enthusiast maybe like I am and maybe like you as a listener to this podcast might be. She’s just someone who’s trying to do her day to day life without the car. If she tries to do cycling here for everyday purposes, whether it be running to the shops, going to the town centre, whatever it might be, it feels more stressful here than it does in the Netherlands.

And I’m comparing here, Nuneaton as a town centre. She doesn’t go further than that on a bike. So, we’re looking just at Nuneaton itself, and then comparing that to cycling in the second city of the Netherlands. And the second city of the Netherlands is more comfortable than it is to cycle in a relatively small town in the English West Midlands. And that says the problem right there. That is the issue. We don’t make it comfortable here and that is what we need to be pushing towards.

So, I look forward to my next trip over to Holland. It was a good fun trip. I got some footage from my bike rides and you can find all that over on YouTube. I’ve got clips of me crossing the river on the two bridges, Erasmusbrug and Willemsbrug, also the Maastunnel, and also clips from this ride up to Hillegersberg where the cycling infrastructure is nowhere near as comfortable. All of that is over on the YouTube channel, so do go and check that out if you want to have a little look and see what it is actually like to cycle around the second city of the Netherlands.

What I really would like to do, of course, is to be able to cycle around on my own bike. The one big issue that I had with cycling in the Netherlands was having to give the hire bike back. Of course, you’re limited on the time that you’ve booked a bike for and you have to return it by the time the shop closes, so that puts a constraint on cycling.

I did want to cycle out to the Hook of Holland because we went to the beach at the Hook of Holland. But it’s about thirty kilometres away from Rotterdam. That might be a little bit far for everyday cycling but I can do that sort of distance, that’s not a problem. I’ve cycled from Rotterdam to The Hague before, so cycling Rotterdam to the Hook of Holland should be absolutely fine. But the day we went to the beach was also the day we had to give the bikes back and that would have put an undue constraint on my time at the beach, which wouldn’t have been fun. So, that was out of the question.

I would like to go to Holland with my own bike. Getting your own bike to Holland is not necessarily that straightforward, particularly with Eurostar at the moment who don’t carry full size bikes. So, I do at some point want to get a folding bike. I would love to get a Brompton. I would really love to get an electric Brompton, but at two-and-a-half-thousand pounds, I think that’s probably going to be out of my price range until I’m about seventy-five. So, that’s not happening anytime soon. But as a long term project, getting a folding bike would be really nice just to lug that onto the Eurostar and then have that with me wherever I am in Holland, and being able to go on longer distance rides without the pressure of feeling that I have to get the bike back by a particular time. That would be the ideal. That would make my experience of cycling in Holland that much more exciting. Being able to ride your own bike is having that little bit of familiarity, isn’t it? Being comfortable with my own bike I think would just be that little bit nicer.

So, as a long term project, I would like to do that.

Mechanical issues

But that leads me on to the next thing for me and my cycling is the issues I’ve been having with my bike over the last month. My actual cycling has pretty much ground to a halt. This month, as of recording this bit, I’ve done roughly thirty miles in September, and that’s nothing. I’ve had all sorts of problems with the bike creaking, and I think I’ve mentioned this before. I’ve changed the bottom bracket, I’ve greased the thing, I’ve cleaned the headset – I’ve basically almost completely disassembled the bike and put it back together again to get to the problem of this creak.

It turns out it was in the saddle, the Brooks B17 saddle, which coincidentally also now has a snapped tensioning bolt, which is frustrating because that saddle is only nine-ish months old. So, that’s going to go back for warranty repair. In the meantime, I’ve put a temporary cheap and nasty saddle in its place and the creak has stopped. So, hurray, problem one solved – until yesterday when my pedal fell off the bike, which is not ideal to say the least.

Just as I was pulling away on a quiet roundabout, the pedal just gave away without warning. And it looks like the threads on the crankarm have had it. Now, I don’t know if this is my incompetence in fitting a pedal to the bicycle that’s done it or something else; maybe it’s just worn out after nine-thousand miles where it’s a fairly cheap component, I don’t know. But it looks like I’m going to have to change the chainset which is frustrating and means the cycle is, for the time being, out of action.

So, I’m not really cycling at the moment, which is disappointing. It’s the really the first time since 2017 that I’ve been in this situation. So, that’s my cycling situation at the moment but that doesn’t mean I stop paying attention to what’s going on.

A rant – slow local build progress

Here in Nuneaton we’re still waiting on cycle infrastructure to break ground. We’ve got schemes that are in the pipeline, that have been in the pipeline for a long time, and I’m now hearing are still going to be in the pipeline for at least a couple more years yet. One of the most interesting schemes for me at the moment – well, there are two interesting schemes for me at the moment being developed for the Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough. The first one is the A47 Longshoot scheme that intends to connect [from] the A5, towards the town centre along the A47 Longshoot road. At the moment, that’s a forty mile an hour limit road with some questionable shared use space that’s not really comfortable for cycling at all. If you’re cycling on the road, you’re mixing with heavy traffic, fast moving traffic, pinch points – it’s not nice in the slightest.

This was a scheme that went out to consultation a little while ago; it was supposed to be under development by now. Now I’m seeing that the anticipated delivery timescale for this scheme is not until the year 2023/24. So, this is quite a delay for the A47 Longshoot scheme. There’s no specific reason given for its delay. This is a table of information, a summary table, about various schemes that are in development around the county. The A47 Longshoot is a funded scheme, it’s been out for consultation with its initial drawings – I know it was initially held up by the development of a new road junction for a housing estate on the same road; that itself I think has been delayed. So, that may well be why this one is being held up further. But I will have to investigate and find out what’s going on, get a bit more of a statement from Warwickshire County Council as to what the holdup is on this scheme, because the scheme page itself still makes reference to the closing date of 18 March 2021 on that consultation, and that they’re reviewing comments and considering appropriate changes as the detailed design processes, and project updates will be made available – but we haven’t had any project updates since that update.

So, it’s disappointing to see that we’re still waiting for this scheme to be developed. We’re also still waiting for the Nuneaton to Bedworth to Coventry scheme to be developed, to even be finalised and start to be developed on that one. I’ve spoken about that before. There’s an article on the website about how that one’s been delayed as well, and we’re still probably about two years out from that one being done.

So, at the moment, we’re sort of in a limbo in Warwickshire, where things are promised and promised and promised, but nothing actually seems to be getting developed. There seems to be no real movement on getting schemes done, at least in the Nuneaton and Bedworth area – I can’t speak for the wider county. I also can’t speak to what’s going on behind the scenes. But in terms of what’s happening publicly, there seems to be very little movement.

But it is frustrating. The longer these schemes are delayed, the more that people have to risk cycling on unsafe roads, or they’re just not going to take up cycling full stop. And we’re at the point where we need to be offering people alternatives to driving.

You’ve got the climate emergency. We’re seeing very real effects of that happening around the world right now. Things are not going well in terms of the climate emergency. Transport is a major contributor to emissions in the UK. We need to give people the alternative to be able to say, ‘if you’re only going a few miles, why not take the bike?’ But if people haven’t got the infrastructure – going back to what I was saying in the Netherlands, where you don’t feel comfortable if you don’t have that infrastructure, you don’t feel safe; or you might feel okay yourself, but you’re not going to put children on the roads with poor infrastructure – people aren’t going to make the choice to ride a bike if it’s not comfortable.

Never mind the climate emergency – and that is, or it should be, absolutely number one key priority, dealing with the climate emergency – we have a cost of living crisis. But we’re still not enabling people to take cheap, efficient modes of transport for their local journeys. We’re still saying drive. Social media posts might say, ‘why not leave the car behind for this journey? Why not choose to ride a bike one day a week’ and all this, but the infrastructure on the ground is not echoing that sentiment.

We need to get these schemes moving and I’d suggest that even if you can’t do absolutely brilliant schemes right now, why on earth do we still have a forty mile an hour speed limit on the Longshoot? When it’s been suggested as part of putting in the cycling infrastructure and the fact that a lot of housing is being developed in that area of Nuneaton, that that road becomes a thirty mile an hour road, why is it still a forty mile an hour speed limit? Get that speed lowered. Step one. Instantly makes the roads safer.

Why can’t we have a wand-based separated cycleway in the interim? The road is wide. Take out the pinch points and put in wand-based cycle infrastructure. It’s not perfect, it’s not fantastic, but it’s better than nothing. And on the Longshoot at the moment, on the road itself, there is literally nothing. There is, as I say, these dubious shared use spaces that aren’t overly clear as to where they start and end and frankly are basically footpaths that have been designated shared, but other than that, there’s nothing. There’s nothing on the road itself. So, why can’t we have temporary infrastructure in place in the interim just to get this route going, just to get it working?

In authorities neighbouring Warwickshire such as Coventry, we’re seeing schemes being developed. Now, maybe they started their development phase earlier than what’s happened here in Nuneaton and Bedworth; I don’t know. So, maybe the timescales are still pretty similar. But it just feels like we’re being promised and promised and promised new schemes, better infrastructure here in Warwickshire, specifically Nuneaton and Bedworth, but we get no public facing updates at least that say, ‘this is what’s going on, things are moving, you’re going to get your scheme, and this is what’s happening’. It just leads to a perception that Warwickshire is perhaps dragging its feet.

And I don’t want to do the County Council a disservice. I can only really speak for what’s going on in Nuneaton and Bedworth. If there are other things going on across the county where ground has been broken, fantastic. I’ve spoken about the Lias Line before. That’s brilliant; that’s one route.

How many lines have we got on this page that I’m looking at, at the moment – the Developing Warwickshire’s Cycle Network page on their website? Eighteen schemes are promised on this page. We’ve got three that are marked as delivered in the Rugby and Warwick area of the county; we’ve got one that’s on a phased construction programme – that’s in Stratford upon Avon, where phase one is complete, phase two is November this year, and phase three is next year; we’ve got two on pre-construction, which presumably means they are literally about to start building it – that’s in Warwick and Kenilworth. But then the rest are consultation or design or feasibility stage and are not actually being built yet.

And notice that all those that are being built are in the south of the county. Nuneaton and Bedworth, we have nothing. We missed out for the Emergency Active Travel Schemes during the height of the pandemic. We didn’t get anything then either. So, when is Nuneaton and Bedworth actually going to see some on the ground development of its cycle infrastructure? I’ll leave that question hanging because I don’t have the answer.

The routes are good. Having a route along the A47 is a good route. It connects to the A5 which has a shared use path along it – it’s not brilliant, but it has it. So, by having the A47, you’d have a route that means you can travel safely all the way around to Hinckley, because the A47 around Hinckley has separated infrastructure. Again, poor separated infrastructure, but it has separated infrastructure. So the A47 Longshoot in Nuneaton is a good route. And when it gets extended – goodness knows how many years it will take for that to happen, but when it gets extended – all the way into the town centre, it will be an even better route.

The Nuneaton to Bedworth to Coventry scheme should be a good scheme. The route north to south should be a good spinal route, part of a strategic network that other routes can feed off from. Now okay, the middle section through Bedworth is missing at the moment and that’s not good, but the north section and the south section, they are valuable. And notwithstanding that missing section in the middle, if you do consider this route as a full continuous route, not only does that enable more local journeys around Bedworth and Bedworth to Nuneaton and the industrial estates around Nuneaton, but for those who want to travel further, it also enables that connection from Nuneaton all the way down to Coventry. I’ve spoken about this scheme before and I’ve written about it on the website as well, over at fiets.uk. So, if you want to find out more about that particular scheme, the good things about it and the bad things about it, then go and have a look. But the broader route is a good route.

There’s talk about putting cycling infrastructure in on the south end of Weddington Road which will link from Leicester Road Bridge, which is just outside of the town centre, up about a kilometre north along Weddington Road. It’s not long enough, but it’s useful. Because that then connects to sporting facilities, for example, or it may be useful for people travelling to the nearby high school.

So, there are useful and good suggestions, plans, ideas, funded routes, funded schemes, feasible schemes for Nuneaton and Bedworth, but in terms of at least what we see publicly, nothing seems to be moving. We’ve had these ideas, they’ve been reported in the press, I’ve heard about them obviously, I’ve spoken about them before over a couple of years, but not only do we not have spades in the ground, we don’t get any public statements, any press releases or anything published on the appropriate pages of the Warwickshire County Council website to say, ‘this scheme is still going ahead. This is where it’s at, this is the cause for any delay, this is how far it’s got to go and when we expect these things to happen, and we haven’t forgotten about it’.

And again, how long are we going to have to wait? Construction on the A47 Longshoot was going to be earlier this year, then it was later this year, and now it looks like it’s going to be next year through to 2024. Is it going to slip again? Are we going to see 24/25? Now, I know these schemes are still in the pipeline but it does start to feel like we’re never going to see these schemes actually being built here in Nuneaton and Bedworth.

I don’t really know how to wrap this section up because I just feel like I’m going on a rant, and I am going on a rant. But it’s so frustrating that you get promised these schemes and progress is glacial, with unrealistic timescales and expectations set at the start, and then a real lack of public facing communication.

And my biggest, biggest, biggest worry is, when nothing has happened, maybe nothing will happen. If the spades haven’t gone in the ground, the scheme can still be pulled. And I just have this big concern that at some point, someone’s going to come along and say, ‘oh, inflation. It’s too expensive now. We’re going to pull the whole thing’. Because that’s another problem. As time goes on, costs are going up. Costs are going up for our households; we all know that. Costs are going to go up for the Council as well. The cost to build these things is going to go up. So, the longer we leave it with inflation going the way it is, at some point, will the council say, ‘sorry, this is no longer affordable. We’re not building it anymore’? And we’ll lose out, and any potential benefit that that scheme would have brought for enabling people to cycle for local journeys will be lost. And any person who continues to cycle or chooses to cycle regardless of the fact that there’s no safe cycling infrastructure in place, mixes with motor traffic, continues to be at risk from that motor traffic. What then if there’s an incident?

The roads aren’t safe. We need the cycle infrastructure, we need it now, so that we can move on and say, ‘yes, we’ve got these. Fantastic. Now we can move on to the next bit’.

We’ve got the LCWIP in draft. Hopefully that will be published before the end of the year. Hopefully that will put a bit more of a focus on active travel as a means of transport, putting it a bit more front and centre with other means of transport. But if we want to get people to shift from driving to cycling – not for everything, but for local journeys where it’s appropriate and where people want to – if we want people to be able to make that choice, the County Council have got to put the routes in.

Wrapping up

I’m going to stop there because I have been talking for forty-two minutes. And by the time you listen to this, it will be whittled down because I am on a rant and it’s infuriating, and It annoys me, and I’m still doing it now. So, I am going to stop.

So, I’ll just say, thank you very much for listening to this edition, this ranty edition of the Fiets Podcast. It’s an irregular podcast, so I will remind you again, please make sure you are subscribed to the podcast in your favourite podcast app. It’s on Apple, it’s on Google, it’s on Spotify, other places as well. You’ll find it if you look for ‘fiets cycle’. Put that in there, ‘fiets cycle’, and you will find this podcast. Make sure you’re subscribed and then you will get a notification whenever a new addition is released. Also, you’ll find me on Twitter again, @BicycleBenUK. I will announce on there as well when I release a new podcast.

This will also go out on YouTube. Not every podcast goes out and YouTube, but this one almost certainly will. So, go over to YouTube where you’ll find the ride clips from my excursions in Rotterdam.

And if you want to support the podcast, if you want to say thanks very much for the podcast, for the website, for the active travel stuff, for any of the video content that you found useful or enjoyed or found informative, then you can do that by sending a few pounds my way. You can do that over on the Ko-Fi website – ko-fi.com/BicycleBen. You can find a link over on the main website as well – fiets.uk.

I will see you next time on the Fiets Podcast hopefully. Thanks very much for listening, and I’m going to go and have a lie down in a dark room I think, after that rather extended rant.

See you next time. Bye-bye.