Walking the Netherlands -review 1

This summer I managed to do a few stages of my cross-Netherlands walk. In spring I did a stage of the Lingepad across the Betuwe - timing it to perfection for when the fruit trees were in blossom.

Later in the summer I went off with a friend and walked a delightful stage of the Oeverloperpad - which mostly followed the River Rotte around the northern side of Rotterdam and out to Zevenhuizen.

Along the way we found ourselves climbing the highest 'mountain' in Holland (nb not the Netherlands)- a man made mountain built of landfill that serves as a ski run, a mountain bike track and offers a panorama of views to Rotterdam, Delft and the characteristic towers of Den Haag (some 30km away - seen below) and Zoetermeer to the north. Such a view is a rare treat in such a flat country.



I enjoyed two other unlikely and quite spectacular views this summer. While cycling around Richmond Park (one of my favourite places on the planet) - I stopped on top of Richmond Hill and gazed back to London (shades of Wordsworth here - except he never contemplated the view from a mountain bike) and had a view all the way to St. Paul's Cathedral and the towers of Canary Wharf.

I also did a small cycle trip with a friend that we had plotted for more than a year - but never got around to doing. Rhenen is the next town along from Wageningen - a small town but with an improbably large and impressive church tower.

We were there a winter ago - but the tower is only open to visitors in the summer months (one guided tour a day). We made it for the last week of opening and had the guide all to ourselves - learning much about the history of Rhenen (in the middle ages Rhennen and Wageningen were frontier towns between two different dukedoms - separated by a few kilometres and a stretch of marshland) and about Cunera, the English saint to whom the church is dedicated. There is a lovely story about her (perhaps another day) but Catholic.org/saints doubts its credibility. Her entry on the saints website baldly states "a British virgin venerated in Germany. Her traditions are untrustworthy."

I will confess to a mild sense of vertigo as we got towards the top of the tower.
. There was also a sense of dislocation - of gazing down at a small settlement that dates back to medieval times - but which never really expanded. From the top of the tower you see more fields and flood plain than settlement.

The centres of power and communication shifted. The Rhine once flowed immediately below the city walls and the town was an important trading (and taxation) centre. Now it flows some 200-300 metres south of the town and all that cargo just passes right by.