12 minute read
Living off the flat of the land
BOB DONALDSON
WORDS & PICTURES Bob Donaldson was quick to volunteer to drive his son to a new job in the Netherlands in August last year – and equally fast to load up a bike, book two weeks off, and get ready for some serious time in the saddle in “cycling heaven”. Here’s his story of a 1,500km tour across a fabulously flat landscape – with cheese… lots and lots of cheese
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a cheesy tale f dutch delight
WHILE WET AND WINDY, I was now familiar with the quiet road that led to Gouda which wound its way through the apple and pear orchards that lined the Ijssel. At one point I stopped, stooped down, and picked up a large, juicy and freshly fallen apple from the roadside. Autumn storms have their advantages!
A quick circuit of the pretty town of Gouda (cheesy fact: twinned with Gloucester) and then on to the town of Delft just 40km further west. As you’d expect, it has a fair number of gift shops selling the distinctive white and blue crockery, but what really caught my eye was a huge cheese shop. After snapping a few touristy shots I headed north towards Den Haag, passing a huge greenhouse, many kilometres in length, growing salad vegetables. The sheer scale and industrialisation of Dutch agriculture can take some getting used to.
I skirted around Den Haag and several other towns until I reached Leiden on immaculate cycle paths. More cobbles, twee shops, an impressive church and then I was whipped out of the other side of the town and blown back across the pancake-flat land with neatly laid out, verdant fields, and back to Utrecht. At 151km it had been my longest ride of the tour so far, but had felt more like 200km because of the wind and rain.
This had been my fourth day of cycling. On the first day I rode out to Amsterdam and back. It was just over 100km from my base in Utrecht and I was immediately impressed by just how easy it was to get around on bike: segregated cycle lanes ran parallel on both side of most main roads; crossings and intersections designed to give priority to cyclists, often changing to green as you approached. Truly I was in cycling heaven.
The following day the wind had abated
and I decided to head south as far as Breda. This involved crossing three mighty rivers – the Lek, and the Boven-Merwede, after which I was in southern Netherlands proper, and finally the Bergsche Maas. In the Netherlands you’re never too far from a canal or river – and that means a bridge. Some of the bridges that cross the larger rivers are vast and provide one of the few opportunities for climbing and descending. Breda wasn’t terribly interesting and so I decided to loop in Leerdam, the home of holey Leerdammer cheese. The return leg involved a scenic cycle alongside the River Linge, and the discovery of the Dutch answer to Greggs – a bakery by the name of bakkerij bart.
Refuelled I made my way back to Utrecht atop the Diefdijk which gave majestic view of the fertile farmlands and orchards that adorn this part of the country. Sadly, the fruits were just out of reach – guarded by ancient thatched farmhouses and unpleasant-looking dogs. By the time I’d made it back I had 195km in my legs.
While God may have created the earth, it’s often said that the Dutch created the Netherlands. Reclaimed from the sea and drained by ditches and canals, the Dutch have battled with water over centuries to create the land that we see today. I was reminded of this fact on my next ride which took me down the Ijssel and past a number of remarkable monuments to the flood of February 1953. It was fittingly a stormy day and brooding clouds chased me up and down the river – eventually catching me at Krimpen just as I found a small bar where the local old boys made me feel about as welcome as a breached dyke.
Along the riverside I came across an impressive monument of what appeared
Cresting the Col du Strop
to be a man loading sacks into a boat. I later learned the story that lay behind it: In the great flood of 1953 the mayor of Nieuwerkirk ordered the owner of the river boat, “The Two Brothers” to use it to plug a hole in the failing Groenendijk. The plan worked, the town was saved and a monument to the bravery of Captain Arie Evegroen stands to this day.
On my next longer ride, as I entered the second week of my stay, I decided to head north into Holland proper. There’s a vast channel of navigable water between Utrecht and Amsterdam – the Rijnkanaal. Along its bank is a wide and well-used cycle-path, popular with e-bikers, all dressed in everyday clothing. Along the canal floats huge barges full of aggregate, chemicals and all manner of goods. They go just a little slower than I tend to pedal, and I gradually passed one after the other on my spin towards the capital.
On the outskirts of the city my route led over a vast bridge alongside a busy road. Most Dutch cycle-paths tend to follow main roads which can become a little tiring after a while, although the opportunity to grab a coffee and snacks at a petrol station or fast-food outlet is handy. After 50km I reached Pumerend – a new town with a steady flow of bendy buses leading to and from the capital.
I headed west towards Alkmaar following a scenic canal. The roads were quieter, and I spotted signposts to places with Yorkshire names like t’Veld and t’Zand.
One place intrigued me – Anna Paulowna, which marked my halfway point. It sounded more like the name of a beautiful Polish lady than a humble town in North Holland. The name, it transpired, was that of the Russian wife of King William II (the former Prince of Orange), the marriage forming a strategic alliance between the two countries. The land on which I was cycling had been drained and reclaimed from the morass in 1846 to
Saving the town of Nieuwerkirk
make a 50km square polder, or parcel of reclaimed land. The King, just three years before his death, named the new territory after his wife. How touching.
I pressed on a little further and reached the North Sea, and then cycled across it on a handy piece of highway infrastructure built aloft a vast dyke. To my left, across the water, were the West Frisian Islands. To my right, a large inland sea, the Amstelmeer that created a natural bay, around which I cycled, with the gentle breeze on my back. I saw large clusters of huge modern windmills and reflected on the fact that much of this land has been shaped by the wind as much as by the sea. Perhaps that explained the appearance of more trees which always form a welcome windbreak for cyclists.
I headed further south until I reached another inland sea at Hoorn – the Markermeer, which links Amsterdam with the North Sea, and has another scenic cycle-route running alongside.
After a few more waterside kilometres I turned inland, back to Pomerand closing my northern circuit, and retraced my tracks back to Utrecht. Along the Rhine Canal the suited and e-biked commuters who had sped past me in the morning now dashed past me again on their way back home, little knowing or caring of the joys of tired legs and a day well spent in North Holland.
The following day, the first of September, the winds had died down and it promised to be dry and fair. I thought I’d head east and explore Amersfoort where my son’s new job was based. There’s a main road all of the way there and a top class cycle-path runs beside it. Just before reaching Amersfoort I passed a sign announcing that I’d reached the Col Du Strop with an altitude of 4,000… centimetres! Nevertheless, and bridges aside, this was the first time I’d experienced a descent since arriving 10 days earlier. Amersfoort was a bustling and charming walled town and I soon spotted a welcoming café enabling me to sit and watch the townsfolk busying themselves in the market.
Refreshed and caffeinated I continued my journey out through one of the medieval town gates in the direction of Appeldoorn. After passing through a few neat and spotlessly clean towns in some scenic farmland I entered an area that reminded me a little of Epping Forest. Maybe it was the woods and the dead straight roads.
There was a nice descent into Appeldoorn. It has the sort of air one finds in towns like Cheltenham with grand houses set well back from a wide treelined boulevard of a road. Nearby is the royal palace of Het Loo and I suspect much of the air of wellbeing derived from such near proximity to the ruling elite.
Daventer, however, couldn’t have been more different. On the other side of the Ijssel I found a busy town with impatient cars jostling for position on the narrow roads. I took a quick look around the town centre, and then set out south-west on my return leg. This took me back through woodland and some rolling hills on winding roads. It was delightful. Above Arnhem I crested a wonderful hill which took me plunging down and into the beautiful Jansbeek Park.
On route to Amersfoort I encountered a sign to the Pyramide van Austerlitz. The visitor centre was closed, but a welltrodden trail led me to a tower poking majestically through the treeline. Built in just 27 days in 1804 to keep Napoleon’s
The long and boring straight road Flevoland
soldiers entertained, this 36-metre high earth and turf mound became a monument to Napoleon’s victory over the Russians and Austrians at the Battle of Austerlitz. Despite issues with subsidence, the monument was restored to former glory in time for the 200th anniversary.
My longest ride of the tour was the following day – a 230km loop to the north east as far as Zwolle and around the youngest province in the Netherlands, Flevoland. First down the sleepy River Vecht still lost in morning mists before crossing the much larger body of water that separated Amsterdam from Almere – a new town that has been compared, understandably, to Milton Keynes.
A dedicated cycle-route and bus-route took me to Almere where there were beach huts and sand, outdoor showers and assorted beach paraphernalia. From here one could see the skyline of Amsterdam on the distant shore, maybe 20km away.
After sweeping around a headland the path straightens out – I mean, really straight, like a ruler’s edge. The dyke on which I was cycling stretched on into an infinite point in the far horizon. Occasionally I saw another cyclist, a runner, and an odd car or truck. On the right was water and marsh.
Slowly, signs of Lelystad began to appear. And then I was there – another new town with an odd feeling to it. After 40km of riding along a straight dyke it was a welcome change. The next attraction was a nuclear power station, followed by a series of huge and idle wind turbines. They stretched along the straight concrete coast like oversized lampposts. Would I ever reach the end of this stretch I began to wonder?
And then another vast bridge came into sight. I could hear the roar and rumble of trucks, and it sounded comforting after the solitude of the shoreline. The route passed through Kampen, where I skipped a vast McDonalds in favour of a garage shop (in true Audax tradition) and then on to Zwolle.
Heading back towards Amsterdam and Utrecht, crossing into Gelderland, I spotted a bakery where I stocked up on tasty pastries. After Nunspeet I headed up into the woods (rising to 35 metres above sea level – the highest point of the ride!) and followed some narrow winding lanes to Ermelo.
I passed the Camp of Zeist at Soesterberg, an old military base once used by the US Air Force, and the site of the trial of the Lockerbie bombing (1999-2002) when it became, temporarily, Scottish territory. I’d actually stayed in the Novapark (now Continental) hotel for a business conference shortly after the trial was over, and the Scottish coat of arms was still proudly displayed on the wall behind the reception desk. Now I cycled past unawares and weary before re-joining the road that led back to Utrecht. It had been the longest day of the tour at 231km.
On the final day, I headed once more to Gouda and Leerdam. The weather was back to wet and windy. My mission was simple: to stock up on large blocks of hard, yellow and seriously overpriced cheeses. I’d been resisting this moment from the start, but like all visitors to this flat and endearingly verdant land, I was duty bound to return with half-a-fridge’s worth of dairy gold.
After slogging on past Gouda I decided to cut across country via a couple of ferries – first over the Ijssel to Ouderkerk on a small pedestrian ferry, and then over the mighty Lek at Schoonhoven where I jostled with some impatient motorists.
It was late when I reached Leerdam. I bought literally the last piece of bread from a bakery that was closing for the day and chewed on it while wandering the cold, wet streets. Autumn was now definitely in the air and the light was fading in the broody sky.
I turned my bike for one final time in the direction of Utrecht and enjoyed the feeling of being blown home with a saddlebag stuffed full of Dutch cheeses. What could be a more fitting ending to two weeks in the Netherlands?
JEREMY BISHOP ON UNSPLASH PHOTO ©
BOOM TOWN…
The beautiful 13th century city of Delft, once the capital of the then country of Holland. Back in the 17th century a large store of gunpowder exploded and destroyed many of the buildings – killing more than 100 citizens
