The Fietselfstedentocht route, printed

Eleven Frisian towns in a single day and not a hill anywhere: on Whit Monday 2026, 14,395 riders made it all the way round and back to Bolsward before midnight.

This is the skaters' route, ridden on two wheels. The Elfstedentocht on ice links the eleven historic towns of Friesland but has been held only fifteen times since 1909, the last in January 1997, so the bicycle tour, first ridden in 1912, is the one that happens every year. It starts and finishes in Bolsward, where groups of around 650 riders leave every eight minutes from five in the morning, and it takes the towns in the skating order: the port of Harlingen on the Wadden Sea first, then Franeker, then Dokkum in the far north-east, and then the provincial capital, Leeuwarden.

From Leeuwarden the tour swings back south and west into the lake country. Sneek and little IJlst come close together, then Sloten, the smallest of the eleven, still ringed by its moat with a windmill on the old ramparts. Beyond it the land opens out towards the IJsselmeer, and the route reaches Stavoren on the shore before running north along the coast through Hindeloopen and Workum and back to Bolsward. Along the way every rider collects stamps on a card at posts in the towns and villages, fifteen in all, and the final check closes at midnight.

There is no climbing to speak of. The high points are canal bridges and dikes, so the day is decided by the wind, which crosses the open polders with nothing to break it, and by the long hours in the saddle. The tour stopped being a race after 1958: riders set their own pace, and plenty do it on upright town bikes or in fancy dress. It has run on Whit Monday almost every year since 1947, missing only 2001, for foot-and-mouth disease, and 2020. Places are drawn by lottery, and more than 23,000 people applied for the 15,000 in 2026.