I've seen things you people wouldn't believe: New Zeeland Stories, Part 2

## In my last post from Zeeland province, I took a look at the new bypass around the village of Vogelwaarde. In this post, I will have a look at some interesting things on a trip across the border to Hulst and then on to Goes. Zeeland is a very rural part of the Netherlands and consists of various peninsulas and islands. The southern part shares a border with Flanders (the Flemish speaking north of Belgium) and is known as "Zeelandic Flanders". As well as Vogelwaarde, my visit took in a range of places as we cycled back across the border from Antwerp: * Hulst - an historic city in the south of the province with a strong local connection to Flanders. * Terneuzen - a city which is also in the south (north of Hulst) which has been a port for centuries, but has much more modern development than Hulst. * Breskens and Vlissingen which are connected by a foot and cycle ferry that we used, but sadly, with no time to linger. * Goes - A city in the heart of Zeeland which was on my list to visit because of a roundabout (a good a way as any to decide where to go, right?) My usual health-warning applies in that I was visiting places as a tourist, even though some of what I was saw was with engineering eyes! #### Historic Hulst I visited Hulst in 2017 with my youngest who at the time I transported in a child seat on the back of a campsite bike. We only had lunch there and so when planning Spring 2026's trip, I was eager to have an overnight stay and have another look around. The crossing from Belgium into the Netherlands was on a traffic-free route between De Klinge (BE) and Clinge (NL), complete with a customs barrier (above, looking into the Netherlands). Sadly for the Dutch, the Belgian section of this path was far superior and so I think the Netherlands needs to up its game on providing for cycling. The path itself is along a former railway line and is a nice way to cross the border. We could have stayed on the path to reach Hulst, but instead joined some very quiet rural roads which took us into the south-east of Hulst where we turned west along Van der Maelstedeweg to reach our hotel - Hotel Hulst. Just opposite the hotel was the new "in ulst/ i hulst" sign (above) which is part of the city's branding as a tourist centre where "ulst" is apparently the city's name in the local Flemish dialect. I was actually more interested in the new looking junction that the sign sits by (above). This is the T-junction of Van der Maelstedeweg/ Absdaalseweg with Stationsweg (the minor arm). When I visited in 2017, Van der Maelstedeweg and Stationsweg formed the main road for motors which essentially fired them at the old city. The redevelopment of the junction now means that general traffic avoids the centre and is directed towards local car parks and a regional road, leaving Stationsweg nice and quiet. From a walking, wheeling and cycling perspective, these modes run in parallel with driving and so this means the crossing of the entrance to Stationweg is with a parallel crossing (above). However, crossing the two arms of the main road keeps priority with drivers in a way I don't think you'd get in other places such as Utrecht. Pedestrians used to have zebra crossings on all three arms, so a reduction in service there. There was a nice little cycling link from Absdaalseweg which took us to the hotel's yard where they had secure cycle parking. The old part of Hulst is surrounded by a city wall and moat which is shaped rather like a holly leaf - Hulst can be translated as "holly" in English and the plant is depicted on the city's coat of arms. There's a walking route around the top of the wall which we took advantage of (below). During the day, the city is busy and a place for locals and tourists alike. We were there a little early for the main season staring at Easter and by the evening we had the historic streets to ourselves (below) and they were typically old Dutch and while accessible by car, the network layout discourages through traffic. We visited the Prince of Wales (below) for a drink where we struck up conversation with the owner. In-between some of his taller stories, we asked about transport in the area. He reported that despite the big push for tourism, there was often a problem finding staff; and many people relied on their cars because public transport wasn't the best, especially as there was no railway. It seems these problems are international. #### The road to Breskens After Hulst, we were heading to Goes on the peninsular to the north with the plan to cycle from Hulst to the ferry port at Breskens, with a slight diversion to look at the Vogelwaarde bypass and via Terneuzen for lunch. This was going to be a 50km day and it turned into one the hardest legs I have cycled in the Netherlands! As soon as we left Hulst, we turned into a headwind which stayed in our faces until we reached Breskens - it was blowing at around 35km/h all day! By the time we got to Terneuzen, we were in no mood to mooch around taking photos and so we found a supermarket and stuffed our faces and rehydrated. The port of Terneuzen is on the western side and there are huge lock gates between the Scheldt and the Gent-Terneuzen Canal which is an important route for cargo heading to Ghent. We arrived at the first lock which was in use and because the region is so flat, the main road crosses the locks on lifting bridges which are pretty astonishing to see on the open position (see above and below). There are three locks and from a roads perspective, there are two crossings of each lock so when one bridge is up, the other is down so one can always get through the area. The problem for cycling is the worry that as soon as you head to the "down" bridge, this swaps round and you have to come back on yourself. Luckily, we didn't get caught out. We crossed the entrance to the Westerscheldetunnel which is a route for motor traffic which was opened in 2003 and which saw the end of the ferry between Kruiningen and Perkpolder to the west. You can actually take bicycles on a local bus service through the tunnel, but it's limited to two per bus and you are only taken between the bus station in Terneuzen and the toll area on the north side which means a decent onward cycle to the nearest towns. Once over the locks, the route to Breskens skirts an industrial and port area (above). Of course, there is a smooth and separate cycle track which provides links to the commercial and industrial premises as well as the open spaces. It's one of those places where building cycle tracks wouldn't stand up to any UK-style business case scrutiny, but where the Dutch Sustainable Safety approach demands separation from traffic (and lots of HGVs in this case), so why wouldn't cycle tracks be built? One of the most curious parts of this leg was the road between Savoyaardsweg and Havenstraat (above). It's a pretty typical Dutch rural road with edge markings (not cycle lanes) and a 60km/h speed limit. It also has some pretty wide junctions at each end. Ordinarily, this type of road can feel a little sketchy with that speed limit, even though they are not always too busy. This one was devoid of motors because it is closed at each end with barriers and I think technically private. Looking at the local road network, having this road open to motors would create a rat-run, including with HGVs, and so the area is filtered which requires general traffic to route to the parallel national road N61 to the south. There is an off-road path parallel to this road too, but Google Maps at least will route you along this closed road which I can only assume is maintained to be an emergency route or for local resilience. We we skirted the edge of Hoofdplaat, a village which has been around for quite a long time (above) and which marked the approach to Breskens. #### The Breskens to Vlissingen ferry As I mentioned above, this was a long day and so we weren't interested in looking around and made straight for the ferry terminal at Breskens where we were looking forward to a sit down. The ferry service is at least hourly off-season and twice hourly for much of the day in peak season; it can also get busy in the summer and the advice is to pre-book. We were still off-season so it was a ride-up and go affair. You can literally ride into the terminal and park your cycles indoors which we did (see above) while purchasing tickets from the helpful staff and having a snack. As it turned out, we didn't have to wait long as the ferry soon arrived and we were invited to board (above). Cycle passengers weren't exactly high in numbers (there were more foot passengers), but we parked our bikes (above) and headed to the passenger cabin (below) which was comfortable enough for the 25 minute or so sailing over to Vlissingen. #### A nose around Goes We had thought about cycling from Vlissingen to Middleburg before catching the train on to Goes, but we were too tired and opted to catch the train direct which was easy as the ferry terminal and station are next to each other. Taking cycles on trains in the Netherlands is permitted on most off-peak services, but there is a charge per cycle which generally means most people don't take a cycle, and there's is usually enough of the limited spaces available. You're meant to take panniers and other bags off your cycle and after many trips and many trains taking our bikes on them, we had our first train manager who asked us to take ours off. The photo above is on a Sprinter train from a couple of years ago. Goes is another historic city with a short cycle to the city centre from the station. We were staying to the north which was an easy 2km or so cycle along the main road to the west which was on a disappointing painted cycle lane which had the risk of right hook at a main car park entrance. This was a reminder that the roads and streets of the Netherlands remains an intergenerational work in progress. Our hotel was just north of Ringbaan West, a busy urban connector road providing access to several neighbourhoods to the north of the city. Only a few years ago, we would have crossed at road level, albeit within a protected junction, but there is now an easy to use underpass (see above) which came with the construction of a new neighbourhood. In this area, the motoring and cycling networks had become unravelled from each other. Part of the new development fronts some canal-side which provides access to apartments and shops via a footway and cycle track with the latter almost being in stealth-mode given the choice to mix the same colour of the footways with a little bit of red (above). It's not a main cycleway, but a little odd. The old city looks very Dutch with Sint Maartenbrug (above) providing direct access for walking, wheeling and cycling (and mopeds), but not general traffic. Just the other side of the bridge, the area has been pedestrianised with an exception for cycles, exemption-holders and deliveries in specific time windows. A lack of parked cars certainly enhanced the evening view as we headed back to the hotel after a couple of beers and some dinner (below). Being dark also gave a chance to check out the underpass at night which was well-lit and see-through which is common in the Netherlands (below). After Goes, we were going to head back to Rotterdam by train and then on to Hoek van Holland for the night ferry, but before we did, there was just time to cross something off my list. #### A roundabout within a roundabout To the west of the city is the Tiendenplien roundabout which connects the larger city roads to a spur which becomes the A256 motorway which is just 2.5km in length and essentially a connector spur to the A58 motorway which runs east-west along the peninsula. The traffic roundabout is of the turbo variety (turborotonde) where drivers have to choose a lane well before entry and which drops them at the correct exit. Lane changes in the circulatory area are prevented with kerbs and this means they can process high volumes of traffic and side-impact risks are reduced. You can see in the photo above that there signs telling drivers which lane to take. Cycling (and walking/ wheeling) should not be crossing the arms of this type of roundabout because crossing more than one traffic lane at once is both subjectively and objectively unsafe, although such layouts do exist in the Netherlands. Here, there are cycle tracks and service roads (with cycle track spurs such as the one above) which provide for cycling under the roundabout. In general, the road has been raised above general ground levels and the cycle tracks and footways dropped a little so that it's no effort to access the central area and the views through are good (above). Finally, there are four routes converging on the centre of the roundabout and the cycle tracks meet at their own little roundabout. You don't really need roundabouts to manage flows of cyclists, but this one did slow people down a touch and provided a good place for a directional sign (above) and which we used to head back to the city centre and then the station for our homeward journey.

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Build A Belgian Burger: Flemish Style

## Back in the Spring of this year, I visited the Netherlands where I took a look at a village bypass scheme, but this post is from across the border, just outside Antwerp in Belgium. As we cycled to Hulst in the Netherlands from Antwerp, we happened on an interesting road layout on the N70, about 10km west of the city, in Beveren, East Flanders (below). It wasn't something I had on my list to see and it's only after doing a little research have I realised how clever it all is. It's a "hamburger junction", but one with some fancy relish. #### What's a hamburger? In road engineering terms a "hamburger" is a type of roundabout where there is a road straight through the centre ,and which is kind of the patty with the semicircles above and below formed by the circulatory area looking a bit like the two halves of the bun. It's generic and they are quite varied, and often use traffic signals. In the UK, hamburger roundabouts are often signalised and are set up to prioritise the main flow of traffic through the middle with other traffic entering and leaving via the circulatory area. It was a hamburger that we stumbled across at the junction of the N70 Grote Baan and Pareinpark (above). #### Mixed uses This particular location had plenty going on. To the north of the road is a bit of a retail/ industrial park, and to the south, a strip of residential development (and redevelopment) which turns into more residential streets a little further back on each side. The N70 is the main (non-motorway) Ghent to Antwerp road and as well as providing a secondary connection for motor traffic between the two cities, it also provides a local function. The junction isn't unique in this area, there's another one about 1km to the west towards Antwerp which we didn't even notice as we cycled along. From a walking, wheeling and cycling perspective, the N70 has quite a variation in provision. Sometimes people are routed to quieter streets parallel to the main road. There are also shared-use paths, and when there's a bit more street frontage, there's sometimes separate space. The photograph above shows a fairly typical example of a shared path - it's not that wide and was only improved to this standard about five years ago when the hamburger was built. #### Back to the burger In the image below, I have turned on the aerial photography which shows the retail/ industrial complex to the north and the residential development to the south. The road which branches off to the north-west serves the commercial area and perhaps the layout helps that operate; but why not just have a roundabout? The image shows a pale grey road running through the middle and this starts to pull at the purpose. Back in 2020, the junction was a pretty typical inter-urban/ urban fringe road (above). The left turn lane in the centre was to access the commercial area and you can see there's a painted cycle lane. On the right there's a bus stop in a layby which doesn't exactly help with bus priority. And here we find the purpose of the hamburger - it's a bus priority measure. The photograph above shows the westbound approach and there's a fair bit going on here. Just to the left of the image, there's a bus lane to the left of the general traffic lane and this is controlled by a traffic signal. It's hard to make out, but it's actually a tram signal and depicts a horizontal white bar in the upper aspect which means stop. The chequerboard marking shows where the bus lane crosses another road and essentially means "keep clear". Drivers give way to traffic on the circulatory area due to the triangular "shark's teeth" markings. For general traffic on the other side of the road, there are other signals, including the mast arm - we'll see more of these in a while. You can also see a cycle parking shelter in the middle of the junction. The geometry is tight and the curves have an adverse camber to slow drivers down. The block paving is for larger vehicles to overrun if required, but that's a little sketchy when you're on the shared use path to the right! The photograph above is on the same side of the road, but looking east this time. You can just see there is a separate cycle track to the left of the hedge with the footway in a slightly different material. There's the same on the other side and they are actually two-way! You can also just make out the access road to the commercial area on the left. The traffic signal by the red car on the left is to control traffic entering the circulatory area and the one in the centre is for buses leaving the central road. The right hand signal is for buses entering in the junction and again, is a tram signal. #### Getting to the meaty part #### The photograph below is the view east from the centre of the hamburger - the meat in the bun. You can see the bus stop with its shelter. The bus road here is concrete to resist braking and acceleration forces, and to the left, the light grey guidance tactile paving ends at a black square which will be where the front door of the bus stops. The black square is a "tactile ground surface indicator" (TGSI) and is made from neoprene, so it has a slight amount of give to provide a tactile response. It's hard to see, but the mast arm traffic signal to the right of the photograph is showing an amber signal at the bottom (where we would usually expect a green). It was actually flashing which means drivers should slow down and be prepared to give way, which will be to buses leaving or entering the centre of the junction which is an exception to usual roundabout rules. In practice, this means the chequered areas are acting like a level crossing for buses which have absolute priority in this context in the same way as a tram would. The photograph above is from the same location as before, but now looking west. At the opposite bus stop, you can see a high kerb which is compatible with low floor buses to make them almost step-free. There's guardrail to help marshal people to the crossing point (which I am standing near) and the shelter is free of advertising so views through it are clear. You can also see the signals on the mast arm to the right with the amber aspect showing (caught mid-flash once again). Taking a step or two back, the photo shows the crossing that I was standing by in the previous photograph. The crossing is between the two bus stops and a bus driver stopped would see people crossing in front of them. For pedestrians, there are zebra crossings over the two bus roads as well as the general traffic lane in each direction. The tight geometries of the general traffic lanes mean drivers have been slowed before they reach the crossing point. Cycle traffic is required to give way, which is fairly consistent for a road of this class, and for the bus roads, absolute priority is with buses anyway given the general approach taken from tramway design. When we were there, it was fairly easy to crossing as a pedestrian or a cyclist. #### Bun-stoppable The final image (above) is of the commercial access road (Pareinpark). I had to take this from Google because I was too interested in the main layout I didn't think to snap this! You can see from the red surfacing across the junction that the cycle track is two way and cycle traffic has priority over traffic. The problem we found here was the the advertising on the verge to the right of the footway. As we approached the junction, drivers couldn't see us as they approached the junction from the side street and so crossing he junction felt a little precarious. A continuous treatment would have been better from a design priority perspective, but running HGVs over that would destroy it and so a marked (parallel) crossing with a zebra for the pedestrian side would have been better. #### (Nearly) well-done I have had a dig around to see if I could find out more about the scheme that led to the layout that caught my eye, but I couldn't - if you have some insight, please share it as it's good to know the background. It's worth a cruise up and down the N70 here on street view to see other things going on, but it just shows that bus priority can be retrofitted, even where the corridor isn't that wide. The thing I like most about this junction is that it is all very logical and intuitive, even if a little rough around the edges for cycling and I think it's a design we could use in the UK, although the signalling would have to be adapted to our standards. The mapping and associated street view images are all © Google 2026.

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