May 22, 2025
In every life, a little wind will blow
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HOLLAND IS A fine country. It has a cosy charm. It is also flat, and because of that it is windy. Today, and I groan as I write this, it has been tree-bendingly windy, and right in our face. And so we have arrived in Leerdam, after no great distance, feeling less than baby fresh. Or that’s how I was, anyway. Steph is leaping like a squirrel.
We set off along a cycle path that topped a long dyke. A road ran lower than we were and already we could see cyclists crouched low on the handlebars, nibbling the tape, while others rode as fast as light motorcycles in the opposite direction. The wind counts for everything here.
Across to our left was a nature reserve, to which a neat line of children were being led to look at, well, nature. After that, though, the joy went out of the morning. We fought against the invisible but tangible foe. When the path turned, we leaned on it. And just rarely, when it lost its presence of mind, it sneaked up behind us.
An old friend used to tell us, when we were kids: “Don’t ride the hills before you reach them”. Meaning not to fret about difficulties ahead; worry in advance and you’ll be tired in advance. It’s rarely as bad as you fear. Or, as the Spanish are supposed to say (I have never checked that they do), the horns of a bull at night can be the ears of a donkey by morning.
Well, sod that. It doesn’t often rain in Spain, except on the plain, but in Holland it does. And it started raining. But donkey’s ears there certainly were. The long straight bridge that crossed a river on our map – long, straight and exposed to the wind, that is – turned out to be a ferry. We waited as it poured out cyclists – just bikes and pedestrians (car drivers can go off and find a bridge) – and we boarded "the ship of the year, 2024" along with a couple of others.
By then, we were reluctant to leave. The sun had come out and our wait for 2024’s prize-winning ship had given us a walk around Woudrichem. And for somewhere that nobody has heard of nor put in his notes (i.e. me), it was a delight. Old masted boats lay in the harbour and quiet roads ran between century-old houses once the home of fishermen.
Coffee and cake were called for on the other bank and from there we had just 15km to Leerdam, home of cheese of the same name and “capital of glass” for its workshops and exhibitions.
We have been welcomed by a charming pensioner of slender, athletic shape who, through wind-chapped lips, tells us that he has walked the length of the Pyrenees with a load on his back. He is there – on the campsite, I mean, not the Pyrenees – because he was staying as a paying visitor but had been called to run the front desk as a volunteer.
Somewhere here, too, on this farm converted to campsite, are three other cyclists. We saw them arrive, fresher than we were, but they have disappeared.
We shall sleep well tonight.
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Tot later!
1 week ago