ABSTRACT
“Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia, sometimes following beside the great high roads, but oftener taking their own more agreeable line amidst woods and crops and pastures.” With this quote from H.G. Wells’ 1905 novel A Modern Utopia, Dutch civil servant Jan Dirk Christiaan van Dokkum characterized a dream that he thought had become reality in the Dutch Gooi region around 1920. 1 Located southeast of Amsterdam and north of Utrecht, it was a wealthy region with an attractive landscape of waterways, sand dunes, heath, and woodlands. Many shared his sentiment: when Dutch historian Pieter Geyl lived in London in the 1920s, he had only taken to walking; back in the Netherlands, he talked about his love for cycling around Utrecht, where he became a professor in the 1930s. Initially, the historian had not planned to buy a bicycle, however, his colleague Willem Kernkamp said: “Not buying a bicycle? That is one of the greatest pleasures one can have here!” After he and his wife duly bought bicycles which they “used almost only for rides outside the city,” Geyl had to admit “it is almost impossible to say how invigorating [verkwikkend] this has been for me.” 2 He enjoyed touring alongside the canals and lakes.
