For my latest adventures traveling by cycle and train in the Netherlands, I headed south and west in a trip which included a foray into Belgium to visit Antwerp. However, this post comes from Zeeland province in the south-west of the country.
I first visited this part of the Netherlands as part of a camping holiday in 2017 where I wrote about cycling longer distances which was my first real immersion in Dutch road network design, but it involved hiring campsite cycles which had to be returned to base.
My Spring trips of the last few years have been with my own cycle which in combination with the train has enabled plenty of inter-urban trips that have been even more insightful. This year included cycling from Antwerp (Belgium) to Hulst (Netherlands) and then on to the Breskens - Vlissingen pedestrian and cycle ferry. However, this post is going to concentrate on the village of Vogelwaarde which I cycled through in 2017, but the story starts before then.
As ever, there is a health warning about what I write as it has been pieced together from what I can find online and any local insight is always greatly appreciated.
Background
There used to be a car ferry crossing the Western Scheldt between Perkpolder and Kruiningen, but that was closed in 2003 when the Westerscheldetunnel was opened some 16km to the west and which carries the N62 between Terneuzen to the south and the A58 motorway to the north. It is very much for motors, but pedestrians and cyclists can use local bus routes. For cyclists, it might be a bit of a gamble as there is only space for two cycles on the buses and given that cars are free, it's more expensive to cross as a pedestrian or cyclist!
The closure of the car ferry will have shifted traffic patterns in the area and when I visited in 2017, there were signs that the N689 serving Perkpolder had been downgraded from a dual-carriageway to a single carriageway (I think) given it no longer fed the ferry. You can see the changes between 2009 and 2021 in Google Streetview. There was a regeneration plan for the area, but it seems to have stalled just now.
What does this have to do with Vogelwaarde - the village sits 3km west of the N689 and so was bypassed for longer distance traffic anyway? Well, there are other villages to the north and the obvious driving route for some trips is through Vogelwaarde rather than the N689, and with the closure of the ferry, all of the longer distance trips have to come south and then west first, whereas with the ferry, northbound trips wouldn't have bothered Vogelwaarde as much.
When I visited Vogelwaarde in 2017, there was some familiarity to British eyes. The village centre had been traffic calmed and repaved (above) and the north-south approaches had been traffic calmed (below).
However, it was felt that the traffic situation was still unacceptable and a more radical solution was required - a road bypass of the village. In the UK, such a bypass would end up being a gold-plated high-speed affair and probably linked to low-density residential development. For Vogelwaarde, the solution was far more pragmatic.
A clue can be found on the roundabout which provides motor vehicle and cycle access to the village from the N290 to the south (above). The large horseshoes signify one of the area's most important industries.
Even more of a clue was provided by this trailer towing tractor using the roundabout because Kerckhaert is based in Vogelwaarde at the Royal Kerckhaert Horseshoe Factory. The company manufactures and suppliers farriers' equipment which in this rural part of the Netherlands (Zeelandic Flanders) and adjacent Flanders has a large local catchment as well as the national and international markets.
Solving a local problem
Part of the traffic problem in the village was linked to agricultural vehicles, traffic from an industrial estate to the north and HGVs accessing the factory. The Hulst municipality developed a plan to build a "landbouwweg" (agricultural road) around the village which would include a connection to the factory and would thus remove the undesirable traffic.
The new road was part funded by the EU and opened in May 2024 as Honoré Kerckhaertweg after starting in February 2024; which is a pretty astonishing pace, although that's not the whole story.
The approach from the south (below) was as I remembered from 2017, although a new traffic sign showed that the other villages in the area to the north are accessed for motors via a different route to Vogelwaarde itself.
It's a typical rural Dutch main road with a verge separated two-way cycle track. Remember, this is not even a National road by class, but as with those, protection is provided to cyclists (and moped riders) which in turn gets them out of the faster and heavier traffic.
A little closer (above) and we reach the village limit marked by a standard sign with the speed limit (50kph / 30mph) and parking control information, as well as a speed hump, but the cycle track persists.
Closer still (above) and the new road bends quite tightly to the right in a way that a UK bypass scheme designer could not comprehend. Just after the bend, the speed limit increases to a standard rural 60kph (40mph) with access to Vogelwaarde to the left as the minor arm of a T-junction.
The cycle track then rejoins the carriageway (as it did before the bypass was built) on the basis that the route through the village is shorter than the bypass for cycling and of course is now much quieter.
The longer story
I said earlier that the quick pace of building the road wasn't the whole story. Now that through-traffic has been cleared out, the southern entrance to the village has been closed to motors while the local cable and sewer networks are replaced and once that's done, the speed limit is being reduced to 30kph (20mph) and the streets remodelled to match this lower speed, lower traffic situation; although so far, I have not been able to find any proposals.
The lack of cycle track on the bypass road means it is not for cycling on (or using mopeds) and the end of the cycle track within the village limits reinforces this by design. I did used to have people telling me that the Dutch gave up their rights to cycle on the road, but after cycling hundreds of miles in the country, I would not want to cycle on the type of roads I would have to in the UK - give me a Dutch rural cycle track or local access road any time.
However, it is still possible to go and have a look at other parts of Honoré Kerckhaertweg by cycle, such as the crossing of it at Grafelijkheid (above) which was severed, but where the last part has been retained with a filter that turns into a cycle track. The end of the 30kph zone sign is for moped riders crossing to the road ahead (but not joining the bypass).
The eastern end of Grafelijkheid on the village side is a cycle track which provides access to a refuge on Honoré Kerckhaertweg and on the other side, it forms a marked priority junction for general traffic that continues towards Terhole to the east, although this will be an extremely quiet lane for cycling.
The view from the refuge shows how modest the road really is (above, looking south). It's just the width required for the traffic using it and is not designed to add capacity in any way. It really is just a replacement for the route through the village - it doesn't even have a centre line!
The refuge is long and only raised at each end (above), with a rough and fairly low irregular paving design between the raised areas. I don't know for sure, but I guess this is to allow agricultural traffic to turn left into/ out of the eastern Grafelijkheid. Or at the very least it adds flexibility to the layout where future maintenance or emergency access is needed.
Looking north from the refuge, it is possible to see the factory access (above) and ongoing remodelling works. The road appeared quickly, but it's taking a bit longer for the wider plans to unfold!
I didn't look at the northern end of the village because the interface there is the same as the southern end - it's on Google Streetview, so you can have a nose around yourself - we had to crack on into the howling headwind to continue our journey across Zeeland.
Conclusion
I'm not a road building fan in the main, but I will make allowances for projects like Honoré Kerckhaertweg because it is very much part of a wider plan to genuinely improve the environment and liveability of a village while supporting the rural economy. It's not like the UK which builds roads to increase capacity and it's not like the UK because the long term will see changes in the village to make it unattractive to drive through.
When I think of the rural parts of the UK I have visited over the years, this type of treatment, along with verge-separated village to village cycle tracks is just the sort of thing we should be doing and perhaps with some careful village densification. We acquire land for large bypass roads and doing the same for projects like this should be no different.
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