For our final VeloViewer Wrapped story we get the inside scoop on Dutch tiler Yorick Dix’s infographic. Renowned for his explorer corridor in 2024 to the Mediterranean from his home in the Netherlands, in 2025 he travelled equally impressive distances and grew his Cluster by almost 2,800 tiles.
Take inspiration from Yorick’s year of riding with his Q&A which highlights his motivation to ride with no focus on speed but more the pure enjoyment of adventuring.
What are you most proud of from your VV Wrapped?
Well, I rode 20,000km this year which is a big number for me. But I don’t think I’m proud of it, riding my bike is just something I love to do. Racer, gravelbike or citybike, I ride them with equal pleasure and I’m fortunate to be able to do it a lot. Others ride more, or less, it doesn’t matter much to me. It’s about going out there, seeing stuff, sharing experiences with friends during a ride or to be able to tell something memorable at home or on Strava.
Even so, I wanted to ride 2,000km in December. And 2,000km in December is just a lot. But the weather was mostly fine, and I liked to go out there to do some big rides. So with five 200+ rides and a bunch of smaller stuff I made it to 20,000km.
Which of your stats were you most focused on in 2025?
As every year since 2017 I do a lot of exploration, finding new tiles. In 2025 I increased my cluster with almost 2,800 tiles, it’s now 31,000+. But for a few years I’m not really competitive anymore, I moved down to 7th spot on the cluster leaderboard with not much to fight for. I’m just not able, or don’t want, to put the time in as others apparently can and do. But it suits me fine, I am focused on reaching new places with a corridor, that is really fun to do and it looks great on a map.
This year I reached the following places with my cluster: Hamburg (D) through the amazing Lüneburger Wald, Rochefort (B) in the pouring rain and the brilliant Côte d’Opale west of Calais (Fr). Earlier, in 2024, I reached the Mediterranean, this led to an interview on the Ride Every Tile Strava group.
For me the fun is much more in riding in new terrain than for the numbers alone.
Almost every ride I always stop for lots of pictures, sometimes I even turn around for them. I never want to be in a hurry and on a good day I see so many details: in the landscape, on buildings, with people, just on the road, everywhere. And after every ride I try to write an activity description with some thoughts on the day.
What challenges did you face in the year?
In August I participated in an ‘ultra’, a long-distance race. Well, for me it was certainly not a race, I just wanted to finish safely and in time. I chose the Liège – Paris – Liège ultra in August, because the route looked promising, with 1,200km it was long but not excessively long and I was able to travel to Liège by train. I was not going to fly anyway.
Beforehand I was nervous, very much so. I know I could ride for a long day, but could I do so 4 days in a row? I’ve been reading and following stuff like this for a few years, but I had really no idea what was waiting for me. The start was at 6pm, so the logical thing was to keep on riding through the first night, which I did. The hours between 1am and 3am in the North of France, with only red blinking lights to focus on, were memorable. The lights could be the rear lights of a fellow participant, of a windmill 5 miles away, or of a windmill 300 meters away. There was no way of telling, there was nothing else at all to be seen for hours. I made it to the next checkpoint in Laon, slept for 30 minutes in a bus stop and survived Paris during rush hour. To drive through a crazy city, nobody even faintly noticing you, while I was doing something that was important to myself, it was an amazing feeling.
So eat, sleep, ride, repeat for almost 4 days, and I made it in time. It felt really great to cycle through Liège for the last few kilometers, in beautiful weather with a body that wasn’t even hurting that much and with the organization and some participants waiting for me. A truly amazing feeling to feel so proud. And related to VeloViewer: during the first 26 hours, in which I rode close to 500km, I entered and exited my tile cluster a total of 13 times.
Are there any riders or adventures that inspire you?
There are a lot to choose from, but if I have to pick one it must be Elmar Hogenboom. He always makes his miles in good humor and I really like his style of tiling. He knows that tiling is not something just of this year or the next, it’s for as long as you keep your Strava account going. He goes where he wants to go and picks his tiles along the way, he doesn’t obsessively fill every hole in his cluster or just adds layers to his square. This brings his unchecked tiles relatively close by, which is really a treasure I came to realize now I have to drive more than 2 hours by car to the closest new tile. Elmar’s cluster now stretches from Lübeck, Germany, at the Baltic Sea to Alicante way South down the Spanish Mediterranean coast and back to Münich at the most eastern point. That is just amazing.
Have you set yourself any targets for 2026?
I really love to make long days in the saddle, a typical long day for me is 200km or longer. My first 200km was the Dutch ‘Elfstedentocht’ in 2013, an amazing event where tens of thousands spectators just watching us ordinary cyclists. After that I made it a challenge to do a 200km+ ride at pretty much every reasonable opportunity. By now I have done a total of 175 of such rides. A goal for 2026 would be to get to an eddington of 200km (meaning: a total of 200 rides of 200km or longer). So I need 25 additional big rides for that. In 2025 I did 31, so that could be feasible.
Besides that I don’t think in terms of ‘targets’, I cycle because I want to be out there. But there already are nice plans on the calendar.With a group of friends we will bikepack our way to Hamburg for a concert in March, with my friend Barry I’ll ride to Berlin in a few days in September and in August I’ll participate again in the Liège – Paris – Liège ultra. A lot to look forward to.
