Jaagpaden along the old Dutch passenger canals — where they run and what they are surfaced with.
Before the railways, the fastest reliable way to cross Holland was the trekschuit: a flat barge pulled at walking pace by a horse on the bank. The canals dug for that traffic in the seventeenth century are the trekvaarten, and the path the horse walked is the jaagpad — the towpath.
Most of these paths outlived the service they were built for. Some became cycle paths, some became access roads, some vanished under later development and survive only as a name on a map. This is a working index of the ones I have actually ridden or walked, kept mainly so I stop re-deriving the same information every spring.
| Trekvaart | Between | Length | Towpath surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| Haarlemmertrekvaart | Amsterdam – Haarlem | ~20 km | Asphalt, continuous |
| Leidsevaart | Haarlem – Leiden | ~30 km | Asphalt, one gravel section |
| Vliet | Leiden – Delft | ~18 km | Mixed; brick through villages |
| Delftse Vliet | Delft – Rijswijk | ~8 km | Asphalt |
| Naardertrekvaart | Amsterdam – Naarden | ~16 km | Gravel and packed sand |
| Zaanse vaarten | Zaandam – Alkmaar | ~28 km | Discontinuous; several detours |
| Overijsselse kanalen | Zwolle – Deventer | ~35 km | Packed sand, poor after rain |
Lengths are approximate and measured along the water, not along the ridable path, which is usually longer because of bridges and detours. Where a towpath is interrupted I have written the length of the canal, not of the surviving path. Treat every figure here as a rough planning number rather than a measurement.
Four descriptions cover almost everything. Asphalt means a maintained cycle path, usually with its own lighting near towns. Brick is older and slower but rides fine; it appears where the path runs through a village street. Gravel is comfortable on wide tyres and unpleasant on narrow ones. Packed sand is the interesting case: excellent in dry weather, and after two days of rain it turns into something you push a bicycle through rather than ride.
A towpath switching banks is the other thing worth knowing in advance. The horse crossed at a overhaal or at a bridge, and where the modern path does not follow, the detour can add a few kilometres. I have marked the routes where this happens more than once as discontinuous.
Only the historical passenger canals, and only the Netherlands. The Flemish trekvaarten around Ghent and Bruges belong to the same system and are not covered here — I have not ridden them. Shipping canals dug later for freight generally have service roads rather than towpaths, and are out of scope even where the road happens to be pleasant.