It’s time to show you a new ride, and I always enjoy showing a real ride: one where I actually go from A to B for a reason. This time I had an appointment at a hospital that I had not visited very often before, so it was a good opportunity to show you how I got there.

At the beginning of this journey I ride along the reconstructed canal, at the location where a motorway ran from about 1973 to 2010. Seeing side-by-side pictures of both situations never ceases to amaze me.

I was still dealing with some consequences of my open-heart surgery in March 2022. My scar had not healed well. A plastic surgeon did what she could to ease the pain and itching, and I must say she did a marvellous job. Both have now finally disappeared after just a few well-targeted injections.

I filmed this ride in February when I went to that hospital for a final check. I have now been discharged permanently, which was about time— four years after the surgery. Regular checks of the heart itself will of course continue for the rest of my life, but those can take place in the local hospital in my hometown. This hospital is in Utrecht (which is also the city where the operation took place), so I took the train from my hometown of ’s‑Hertogenbosch. The distance is 48 kilometres and the journey takes just 28 minutes. Intercity trains run every 10 minutes, which makes the trip very convenient.

This cycle street, where cars are guests, was constructed in 2017. It now forms a quiet route from the city centre to the west.
On the return trip I used the parallel main road. Both routes are perfectly suited for cycling.

In the video I start by showing how I walk to my bicycle in Utrecht, which you can recognise by the “American Fietser” sticker. Since I put that sticker on the rear mudguard I can find my bike much more easily. I should have marked my bicycle in some way ages ago.

It was there that I realised I had forgotten the key to my bike and could not unlock it. No big deal. I only had to walk one floor down to the rental bicycles and quickly got one by tapping my public transport card on the lock. That is why you see me suddenly leave from the basement to start this ride. (My own bicycle is parked on the ground floor, which people familiar with the bicycle parking garage will notice.) This is the largest bicycle parking garage in the world, and it shows. It took me a minute and a half just to cycle from the parking spot to the exit of the garage.

This is the on-ramp of the so-called Gele Brug (Yellow Bridge) over the Amsterdam–Rhine Canal. This used to be the western edge of the city until expansion beyond the canal in the 1990s. The yellow bridge has a bi-directional cycleway, two lanes for motor traffic and two lanes for buses. The two grey bridges to the right are for trains.
In the newest neighbourhood of Utrecht construction is still ongoing. The building in the distance looks like an older industrial building but is in fact a brand-new parking garage designed to resemble one.

The ride itself was very convenient. Even though you cycle through the centre of the city, you are mostly away from motor traffic. At the first traffic lights two buses passed me, and I would see those buses several more times. See the captions of some of the photos for that. I took a quiet route to the hospital via the cycle street that the Cremerstraat became in 2022. I wrote a post about that conversion at the time. On the way back I chose the main road instead. It was very quiet too for a Friday afternoon and actually quicker, even though you encounter more traffic lights.

The St Antonius Hospital can easily be reached by car, bus and bicycle.
The hospital has a parking lot and a bicycle parking facility for visitors on its own grounds.

The ride to the hospital was very uneventful. The only remarkable thing was seeing the same two buses again and again, even more than ten minutes later near the edge of the old city by the motorway entrance. My takeaway: it takes motor traffic just as long as a cyclist to get out of the city centre. No wonder people so often choose the bicycle in the Netherlands.

After the check at the hospital, I cycled back to the railway station via that other route. Just to show that there are always alternative routes. It could have taken longer if I had encountered more red lights, but I was lucky at several junctions and the return trip actually took less time than the ride out. There really isn’t much to say about the trip, but that is exactly what makes it special when you look at it from outside the Netherlands—and also the reason why I show it.

I kept seeing two buses. This is the first one as it passed me for the first time at 2:28 in the video.
The second bus appears again at 04:05 in the video, when I passed both buses waiting at a red light.
Just about a minute later, at the 5:10 mark, I saw both buses drive off and did not expect to see them again.
But as I reached the inner-city ring road, where it connects to the A2 motorway access, I saw both buses again (11:26). They had taken exactly the same amount of time to get out of the city centre as I did on my bicycle.

Enjoy the ride!

Ride to a hospital in Utrecht, from Central Station, and back.