It's always cool to be able to announce reinforcements for team Cycling Destination. Recently, we have been busy looking for enthusiastic cyclists who would like to travel for us. What they experience during their adventures, we then like to see that reflected on our platform. We have been working with Erwin and Erwin, the Mountain High Chasers. They have been helping us fantastically with the Classic Rides section so far. From today, we will expand the team further. We are also very happy to have added a woman to our 'men's club'. Ruth Koops van 't Jagt will be blogging for us and her first adventure is coming soon! Next week, she will be delightfully on Gran Canaria.
Who is Ruth Koops van 't Jagt?
I like to live, work and get lost in and around Groningen. After all, the best ideas are born on the gravel bike, mountain bike or road bike. I work as an independent researcher and consultant, connecting science, art and adventure to make the world a bit more beautiful. For Salt Magazine, I am one of the trailseekers: I create cycling routes in my area that are just a bit different from the usual. I also started the irregular but very enthusiastic gravel club Van 't Padje for enterprising women who like to go off the beaten track.
The bicycle to the rescue
Cycling was my salvation when I first became a mother and lost myself in the process. On the bike, I find myself again. And I experience the most beautiful adventures, alone or together. The Drentsche Aa area, the dunes of Gasteren, the Balloërveld, the barren, windy Hogeland. Cycling through Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland reads like a poem: Hungry Wolf, Kopaf, Nooitgedacht, Doodstil. Oude Willem, Donderen, Geeuwenbrug, Amen.
Galibier
In 2007, to the amazement of all my seasoned cycling friends, I conquered the Col du Galibier in France (okay, okay, from the Lautaret, but still). It was there that I felt for the first time how incredibly beautiful it is to climb a mountain on a road bike. It's such a wonderfully honest battle: you, your bike and the mountain. Finding the right cadence, saving your lightest gear like a dessert until last, and on the less steep sections taking in the view like a big glass of water with greedy gulps. Maybe you shift wrong, maybe you are overtaken by an elderly Frenchman with suntanned sinewy calves, maybe you have to dismount the last few metres and continue climbing with your bike in hand. But you make it, against the laws of gravity. Despite your lack of athletic ability, and on that cocky little twenty-euro racing bike. That magical, tingling feeling of victory when you have amazed yourself is addictive.
We want more
After the Galibier, my cycling adventures included adventures on the Mont Ventoux, the temple mountain Doi Suthep near Chiang Mai, in the snowy Sierra Nevada, on an old railway track in northern Portugal, and with children in a bicycle trailer in the vicinity of Girona and Calpe.
From now on, I will also go on adventures for Cycling Destination and share my stories with you. In words and images. So that your cycling heart will beat faster too. Because the world on a bike is poetry for next to nothing. The first adventure? Gran Canaria in February!
