WHEN YOUR BEST VIEW of the land is a dizzying 4cm below you as you step down from a pavement, you realise how flat everywhere is.

Well, not totally flat because even the Netherlands isn’t that. But pretty flat, anyway, and not always that high above the sea. That gives problems but it also provides solutions. Every time the Dutch worried about other nations nabbing where they lived – and it’s happened numerous times – they worked out they could open the rivers from their banks and send the invaders to a gurgling death.

To that end, they built a series of dikes, forts and sluices, kept an eye out for unwanted intrusions and put their hands ready on the levers.

The line of defences is called the Waterlinie. You don’t need a Masters in Dutch to translate it. These days, the soldiers have gone and there’s little prospect of the land being deliberately flooded. More than that, there’s a signposted bike route that follows what would have been the distinction between damp invaders on one side and drier and giggling defenders on the other.

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It’s not a demanding route, not if it’s not windy, anyway; it’s just a delightful way to see the country without falling foul of fellow tourists. And there are just the right number of stops to drink coffee and eat apple tart.