Gravel Culture: THE SEARCH FOR VELUWE GRAVEL by Erwin Sikkens
Posted By Gravel Union
On 8 May 2020
LOCAL EXPLORATION
Exploration... I was going to look for it abroad this spring, but found it in my own backyard instead.
We’re a couple of months in and we’re all slowly getting used to this new reality of ours. The Covid19 pandemic started off as a bad nightmare where we were all probably thinking it would only affect our spring calendar, but it becomes more and more clear that it’s going to affect us and our plans in the long term. At least the better part of this 2020 season is not going to be what we thought it would be at the start of the year.
In my case, I was planning on riding and taking pictures at a bunch of great international gravel rides throughout Europe and beyond, looking what they’re all about and telling everybody about it on the Gravel Union website. One after the other event however got cancelled and also events that are now planned for the summer and fall have turned into big uncertainty marks at the moment.
It took me a while to absorb the shock of this new reality and due to the scary side of the virus I found myself locked up in my apartment a lot in the beginning. Living in the Netherlands however, cycling is still permitted with respect to #socialdistancing. With spring now showing its most beautiful colours, of course riding my bike seemed like the best medicine.
The problem however is that when you are stuck riding your home turf, you probably already know a lot of the routes and that can make riding pretty boring over time. I found that - when riding my road racer - this is often the case.
Living in Arnhem in the east of the Netherlands I’m blessed with ‘The Veluwe’, a big national park in my backyard, where there’s even some hills in our otherwise flat country. Since there’s only polder landscape in all other directions, the ‘go to’ cycling routes on roads obviously all take me to the approximately five little climbs we have in that national park.
On my gravel bike, the same potential risk lies before me, since there are a couple of amazing ‘go to’ gravel roads in that same national park. These gravel roads are not only ‘go to’ because they’re so beautiful, but also because some other parts are not suitable for riding. Be it because it’s closed off to cycling or because it’s military terrain.
However beautiful riding gravel may be, riding the same bits over and over again can get dull even on the most beautiful gravel roads. These days we gotta make the best out of a nasty situation. What better excuse do you need to scout for new paths and trails?
Leaving the known roads and paths behind and turning left where I always went right has now become my every ride mission. Scouting for new gravel at first sounded like a waste of time – surely, I knew pretty much everything out there already? How wrong I was!
Since going on pathfinding missions I’ve discovered tons of tiny paths, singletrack, grassy patches and even amazing gravel roads that I never knew were there in the first place. I was blind to some of the most beautiful gravel because another locally famous gravel road was just around the corner acting as a big distraction.
Discovering more and more gravel roads and forest paths to ride has been the most surprising item in my 2020 gravel calendar thus far.
I was preparing for foreign gravel, but overlooked a lot of amazing gravel right around the corner. It made me think of why we get on our bikes in the first place. Obviously to stay healthy and because we all love the outdoors and like to roam around. But also exploring and discovering new stuff is for me one of the things that drives me and makes me happy as a kid. I think I kind of forgot about that a bit exploring part a bit, but now with all the time in the world I rediscovered the joy of path hunting on my gravel bike.
To help myself remember the most beautiful highlights, but also to share my discoveries and to inspire other people, I now record most of my gravel highlights and routes in an ever growing komoot collection ‘Veluwe Gravel Collectie’. In times of no gravel events, it’s collections like these that hopefully help and inspire others to get out there and discover yourself also.
Collection by erwinsikkens.com
#leavethemadnessbehind
#explorebeyond