Was in the Netherlands for non-cycling reasons, decided what the heck and brought my brevet bike with me and did a 200k with Randonneurs NL last weekend. Really lovely weather for the location & time of year (upper 30s/low 40s for most of the ride, although with a 9am start the finish for us slowpokes was well after dark, when it gets a lot colder. Even some sun for a little while. It was a very different brevet-riding experience -- about 80% or so on bike paths, including these little country lanes where the road is dirt and the bike path is paved. (One of which was through this sort of desolate windswept landscape that felt more like Arizona than anything else, which I hit just at twilight when it was this lovely shade of melancholy.)
I did spend about 20 miles or more being slowed down by mud under my fenders (the route was entirely paved but one of those side-path-to-dirt-roads had gotten splashed); I'd stopped to extract it but hadn't got it all, and figured the rest would work its way out, which it didn't. (I finally stopped and found a stick and extracted the rest, at which point riding got much easier again.)
Finished just under 11:30, which is slow for me on a flat 200k, but since I took a lot of the second half of last year off completely after a hamstring injury from the previous summer just wouldn't heal, and was doing this on basically no miles, I'll take it. I felt strong, if slow, throughout, stopped to take pictures and eat a more leisurely lunch than I usually do on 200ks,and the only thing sore afterward was my shoulder, which may have been more to do with work ergonomics before/after the ride.
Edit: add some pictures!
A pretty canal overpass.
We went through the town of Baarle-Herzog/Baarle-Nassau, where we crossed the border between Belgium and the Netherlands several times, and I got some frites and hot chocolate for lunch, because if I'm playing bike tourist, of course I'm going to have stroopwafels in my handlebar bag and stop for frites!
Modern windmills in an industrial area along a canal!
Historic windmill just at dusk!
The famous Hovenring, the suspended bike traffic circle, about ten miles from the finish as it was starting to get cold; I stopped, took a photo, and put my warmer gloves on before tackling the last stretch.