Impressions on a country

During the Easter break, my family had a short visit to the Netherlands. My wife and I had spent part of our honeymoon there and she was keen to return when the bulb fields were at their best.

Holland is by no means new territory to me. As a child, my family often visited each year, partly because my parents had friends there and partly because they liked to stock up on various Dutch foods. When I left school, I spent three weeks on a cycling tour around the country with a friend, so I know the Dutch landscape very well.

However, it has been some time since I last visited and I was curious to see how I would view it now that I am a little older. Well, the memories came flooding back and I fell in love with Holland again. It's a beautiful country, filled with so many interesting towns and villages. The people are extraordinarily friendly and helpful, the streets are clean, the bakeries are to die for and the whole experience, though so short a time, has been one of the best few days I've had in a long time.

One thing I had noticed was that the roads are a whole lot busier than I remember, unsurprising since it is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Not that there were many jams. Indeed, I hardly saw a single roadworks, unlike traffic cone Britain. However, they are a bit slow. Looking at a map, Holland is small yet abundant with roads of all sizes and we thought that we could easily drive across the breadth of the county in an hour. Thing about Holland though is that it has a lot of water/canals/rivers, and so the roads tend to weave and criss-cross about like a labyrinth. There are motorways of course, but we often found that they were so busy that the average speed on them was 50-60 mph, which was similar to the smaller roads. It made journeys rather longer but, I have to say, it's remarkable what extra mileage you can get out of a fuel tank at those speeds. And truth was, we were in no hurry.

Of course, to really get about anywhere, you're best joining the Dutch on bicycle. Dutch bikes are a lot different to ones you get in Britain as they're larger and heavier. In fact, it seemed to us that one size fitted all, from 8 to 88. Being larger, one had to get used to getting off the saddle before stopping so that your feet touched the ground, a necessity that my wife unfortunately forgot on a couple of occasions (she still has the bruises). Cycling is a real pleasure in Holland due to the flat landscape and the excellent cycle paths (no stupid green paint on the edge of an ordinary road with cars parked on it like you get here!). They even have their own traffic lights. How very civil.

I'll post later about the bulb fields.