I initially proposed a ride that started in Vilnius in Lithuania, that then went north through Riga, Latvia, then Tallinn, Estonia then by ferry to Helsinki, Finland. From here my planned route turned west to go through Stockholm, Sweden, then Copenhagen, Denmark, and onto to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The ride was about 1500 miles and I expected that it would take about 4 weeks. Unfortunately neither Paul nor John, the cyclists on the tour from Hungary, was interested in a ride in 2016, and my wife, Naoko, was not happy for me to cycle alone.I looked at different options of which one was to cycle back from Copenhagen to Amsterdam, a distance of 500 miles. Jeff King became interested in early February and suggested that we should cycle the reverse way so from Amsterdam to Copenhagen.On April 4th Jeff and I met up and committed to the cycle ride. We discussed the two options (1) cycle from Iijmuiden to Copenhagen and fly back, (2) fly to Copenhagen and cycle back.•Option 1 had the advantage of going in the direction of the prevailing wind but the disadvantage of packing the bikes in Copenhagen.•Option 2 had the advantage of packing the bikes in the boxes at home but then a difficulty arose. We could not take packed cycle boxes on the train from Northallerton to Manchester airport.We decided to adopt Option 1.