Cycling past Frisian windmills

With this route you will experience a wonderful day of cycling in Friesland. You drive through a vast landscape with lakes, waving reed collars and charming old villages. Along the way you will see some beautiful monuments.

Langweerder wheels
Langweer is a village that enjoys a protected village view, partly because of the Osinga State stins. Cycling along the Langweerderwielen you can see many pleasure yachts or skûtsjes. On the banks you drive past waving reed collars. In the meadows and on the water you can spot many birds, such as godwits and lapwings. Tens of thousands of geese stay here in winter. You pass the Sweachmermolen (or Langweerder Molen), a polder mill from 1782 that once also milled wheat.

Douwe Egberts
Joure is known as the town where Egbert Douwes started a shop selling colonial goods such as coffee in 1753. In 1780, father Douwes transferred the company to his son: Douwe Egberts. In Joure you can also see the Herema State stins and the Groene Molen, a polder mill from 1800. The Hersteller and Skarrenmoune are also nineteenth-century polder mills.

Frisian bell chairs
In Oldeouwer you will pass a seventeenth-century bell tower, one of more than sixty Frisian bell towers. These separate buildings were often created because (due to poverty or because the community was too small) not enough money could be collected to build a church (tower). Sometimes a church was later built against or next to the bell tower.