Zaanstreek and Zaanse Schans
Cycling in a beautiful peat meadow landscape with ditches, pollard willows, swaying reeds, rotating mills and grazing cows.
The Landscape
The Zaanstreek is the oldest industrial landscape in the Netherlands, where hundreds of windmills once spun their blades simultaneously. The area presents a characteristic image of Dutch history, with old mills, typical green wooden houses of the Zaanse style, and monumental 19th-century warehouses and factories. Combined with vast peat meadow landscapes featuring meadows, cows, ditches, lakes, reed beds, bridges, and marshy peatlands, the Zaanstreek perfectly fits the image that foreign tourists have of the Netherlands. Windmills, cheese, and wooden clogs. It doesn't get more Dutch than that!
Estates and Heritage
Polders and Farmlands
Swamps and Peatlands
Lakes and Ponds
Route map
You will bike in the vicinity of the towns of Uitgeest, Wormer, Zaandam, Assendelft, and Krommenie.
Start and finish near bike node 84 on the Lagendijk in Uitgeest. However, this bike route is a circular tour, so it offers the possibility to start from any of the following bike nodes.
84 - 87 - 88 - 14 - 89 - 59 - 44 - 45 - 94 - 73 - 63 - 68 - 66 - 65 - 9 - 8 -39 - 38 - 85 - 84