here's an idea
http://bit.ly/1r4KfJ1
about 500k - not including the nightride from Newhaven, so not an "eyeballs out" tour. Night ride to Newhaven, easy ride to Neufchatel to a decent hotel in the town or to the B&B about five miles away that I have used annually for about 10 years. Avoiding the busy coastal road to the north-west of Dieppe - I rode that in September and it's tedious and busy. Then we turn inland and follow a river valley - I think this is the route followed by The Lovely
@swarm_catcher when she does the DIY 200k audax by GPS to her parents' house in Belgium. Then we cross Belgium, and the odd kinks in the route take us to Ostend, which is much more interesting and scenic than you would think, but we avoid the busy coastal route - which can be bloody windy as
@StuAff knows from his ride back this May. Then we see Bruges, which is lovely with canals and old stone buildings etc etc. Into the Netherlands and along the coastal dykes which have things called "cycle paths" but anyone who has ridden in the UK will laugh at the term - these are as wide as a busy UK road and banned to all traffic except bikes and maintenance lorries. We pass some enormous pieces of machinery in the dykes, used to control the water levels. You soon see why the job of water engineer in the Netherlands in so important. The strange kink in the route takes us to the museum set up after the floods in 1956 in which 3,000 people died. The buildings of the museum are housed in some concrete cassions left over from D-Day and they were towed across the North Sea and sunk in the gaps in the dykes to keep the floods out. Many countries of the world rushed to help by building houses and those houses are still there today, called "Norway Street" etc etc. I've been there and it was really interesting, Worth a short detour. Then we go along more dykes through the countryside and return on the Hook of Holland ferry to Harwich. Amsterdam is a bit of schlepp and the ferry from Esbjerg has closed - there are rumours of it opening again but only rumours. So we can't bank on it.
This should be an interesting tour, not hard with lots of hills so if you want that you may prefer to follow Simon's tour from Irun to Girona.
Thoughts please - the more critical the better - the "hallelujah chorus" is no good.