May 25, 2025
The richest poor, the poorest rich
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A FRIEND WAS riding in Holland with an American. The time came when they passed land divided into plots of vegetables, each plot different, each with its small wooden hut. 'Is that where the poor people live?', the American asked.
My Dutch friend needed a moment to understand. And then she laughed.
No, she said, that is where people rent extra land for gardening, and the huts are where they keep their spades and hoes.
The hesitation came not only because Europe doesn’t have the poverty and homelessness of America – we have a welfare state, remember – but because Holland has Europe’s richest poor people and the poorest rich people.
Now, obviously there is a big difference between top and bottom. Nowhere is a Pol Pot dreamland in which money no longer exists. And it is a densely populated country, especially the area between the three rivers that constitutes the midlands. And there, there is great pressure on housing.
That came to us today as we chatted to the wild-haired and ultimately enthusiastic girl at our campground.
‘I’ve finally bought a house,’ she chortled, eager to tell someone. ‘It took a long time because there are more people than houses. I thought I’d got one and then someone offered €50,000 more than the asking price.’ It takes her longer to get to work, she said, but that was a small price to pay for a place of her own.
We were pleased for her.
Hers is doubtless somewhere moderate. This afternoon, though, has taken us past large houses retreating from the road at the end of long driveways. This is where the money is. And then, to make the point, we emerged into a clearing to find the Kasteel Groeneveld.
It is, I read, a 1710 Rococo country house in 130 hectares of landscaped grounds, with a café in the old stables. Certainly the café was busy, although – uncharacteristically – not what we wanted at the moment. We didn’t see anyone go into the house but, had they, they’d have seen the old boy who built it as a summer retreat. That’s what people could manage back then before tax spoiled it for them. And when they needed space for their vegetables and lawn mower.
Anyway, Marcus de Mamuchet, his name was, and he was probably more French than Dutch because France is where he'd been living until he skipped the place in a bout of religious troubles in the 1600s.
This area attracted him and ever since it has attracted mountain-bikers, walkers and horse-riders. At its start is what we take to be a national hockey centre – Holland is a topper in field hockey, as the Dutch put it – and from there on there were holiday resorts and campgrounds. We were happy to ride long, unsurfaced paths even if they needed tricky balance on loaded bikes.
And then, suddenly, we were in open country – a stiltegebield or area of silence as small signs nagged us. And with that, we have moved from the Waterlinie route to that of the Zuiderzee. That will take us round the giant lake of the IJsselmeer, the new name of the Zuiderzee, and then south to Amsterdam.
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