The Pontjesroute is a 44-kilometre cycling route around the Alkmaarder- en Uitgeestermeer, the only lake in North Holland that was not drained in the seventeenth century. The route offers beautiful views and picturesque villages, and crosses the water four times along the way by ferry.
From archaeology to wind power
The route starts at station Castricum, right next to Huis van Hilde, a museum that tells the history of Noord-Holland using unique archaeological finds and reconstructions. From junction 21, the route leads through a lower-lying polder area to the higher-lying Uitgeest, an area through which the Oer-IJ used to flow. At the visitor centre of the Alkmaarder- en Uitgeestermeer stands De Kleine Molen, a sawmill that commemorates Cornelis Corneliszoon van Uitgeest, who around 1592 devised how wood could be sawn using wind power.
Birds, a fort and a prosperous trading village
The Alkmaarder- en Uitgeestermeer is located in a peat meadow landscape, a perfect place for protected birds such as the black-tailed godwit, lapwing, wigeon and sedge warbler. At junction 60 lies Fort Spijkerboor, part of the 135-kilometre-long Stelling van Amsterdam that was built around the capital between 1880 and 1920. Further on, the route passes De Rijp, once a prosperous trading town with one of the largest herring fleets in Noord-Holland, with Museum In 't Houten Huis, the Raadhuis and the Waag as sights.
A sweet shop and two polders
In Graft lies the smallest sweet shop in the Netherlands, opposite the beautiful Raadhuis with a small museum and a tombstone floor of a former church. The route passes both the De Beemster polder and De Schermer, which lies four metres below sea level and is separated from the Alkmaarder- en Uitgeestermeer by a dyke.