Riding from sunrise to sunset on the longest day of the year

Rene Wiertz

June 01, 2020

It all started in 2017. Martijn wanted to cross all 12 provinces of the Netherlands once in his life in one single day. But how?

Because of his work for the Dutch National Broadcaster NOS he knew a lot of athletes. He made a connection between 12 of them and created a group of athletes that became really good friends! We left 21 June 2017 (this day marks the beginning of summer season solstice, which is the longest day of the year. The Summer Solstice is when the tilt of the earth’s axis is most inclined towards or away from the sun and when the sun reaches its highest position in the sky, it’s the day with the longest period of daylight) at 4 am in Groningen for our 450 km trip. 12 provinces, 12 cyclists. In the evening at 10 am we arrived in Bergen op Zoom. All demolished but a life experience richer.

So we continued in 2018 and 2019. Every year something crazy on the longest day, every time a lot of fun, afterwards always a week of muscle ache.

Then plan for this year was to cross the border for the first time! Meanwhile our group had grown from 12 to 21 men. In between were journalists, ex-cyclists, TV presenters and just friends of the show. The most important thing: we all love the bike! Start and finish was planned in Maastricht. In between we would cycle through Germany, Luxembourg, France and Belgium.

But then: Covid-19. We knew almost immediately that our plan for this year wouldn’t be possible. But Martijn wouldn’t be Martijn if he didn’t show up with a master plan.

What are we going to do?

On June 19, 2 days earlier than the longest day, everyone of us will cycle an incredible long ride alone. We all have a gps tracker so everyone can follow us online. Everyone is actually keeping his ride a little secret but I can already tell that I’m leaving on my Strada shortly before sunrise and hopefully I’ll still be on my bike at sunset. All this will be around my hometown Velden am Wörthersee in Austria.