While the bike trip around Holland ended upon the return of our borrowed bikes, we still had a few days left to enjoy summer in the Netherlands. After navigating our way via foot, tram and train to Schipol Airport, we picked up our daughter Noonja and granddaughter Lea for a family visit in Maasland -- halfway between The Hague and Rotterdam. Covid reared its grumpy head again, however, and struck our hosts for the visit, Johan's sister and brother-in-law.

So it was an opportunity to have one last B&B, the Rechthuis van Zouteveen, which sits right on the dike next to the Vlardingenvaart, the sweet flowing canal that winds through the green countryside near where they live. Because of its bucolic setting -- gently curving waters lined with wild grasses and rhubarb to one side, sweeping green fields that reach out to the distant towers of Rotterdam to the other -- the B&B has gained some notoriety after a feature on some Dutch TV show. Understandably! And lucky that we got an upstairs unit with a view and two rooms for our little family. It's a sweet 6km bike ride right along the canal into Maasland to visit the Dutch side of the family.

The complexity of traveling with a two-year-old, however, has also meant the need to travel by car with its conveniently large trunk. Being in a car again after four weeks on a bicycle was surprisingly tough! A roof overhead, watching the world go by behind a glass window, navigating streets and traffic (and bicycles!) on narrow roads -- it felt claustrophobic, dark, difficult and sterile.

When finally we got back on the bikes -- borrowed from our generous Dutch family -- the visceral sense of Holland returned -- the ease of pedaling on flat terrain, geese flying overhead and in family formation across the canals, storks and grebes, swans and gulls, meerkoet and ducks -- all doing their dance in this watery world, smells of cut grass and cow dung, the slow drawl of motorboats chugging up the canal. And upon arriving back at the B&B, a final late night sunset sitting on the dike watching the world go by.

There's no equivalent English word for it, gezellig. The Dutch use it to describe a situation that is pleasant, convivial, fun, cozy, relaxed. The closest we get to it is that "warm fuzzy" feeling you get when things are just right. The Dutch are an industrious people, determined to survive the perils of living below sea level in a marshy land. But between their cruisy bicycle lifestyle and the beautiful way they've shaped their land, the people of the low-lands have indeed got things "just right."

Our final ride from Haarlem to the center of Amsterdam seems to include everything we've seen and enjoyed on this bicycle trip: green fields, canals and dikes, quaint villages with their sturdy steeples, a forest canopy and beautiful parklands, and finally, the web of movement on the urban bicycle path. The memories come sweeping past as it all comes circling to its end. We round the last corner of the final fietspad and there it is: the A1 Bicycles shop where it all began four weeks ago. Our journey is finished. Tears well and a big hug confirms our mutual enjoyment. We've had a great trip.

I'm convinced there is no grander way to travel than on a bicycle. The clever two wheel transport dates back to the early 19th century, when the Americans, with all their inventiveness, excelled at adopting the novel form of mobility. But by the turn of the century, Americans attention began turning to the automobile and the Dutch pedaled past the Yanks to become the world's leading bicycle enthusiasts. So popular were they with the Dutch that the government had to respond, which they did by building dedicated bicycle paths throughout the country. The legacy of that early commitment to two-wheel travel is still being enjoyed today in the Netherlands. Thirty-six percent of the Dutch use the bicycle as their primary mode of travel.

For me, the bicycle has allowed me to engage more deeply and fully with the quirky and complex country at the top of the European continent. "Seems like a wonderful, relaxing and wholesome way to travel," my son writes in an email after browsing through this blog. "You see so much more on a bike...plus you get extra senses such as smell and sounds."

That pretty much sums it up. The freedom to look around, up and down, across the wide open flat land, to stop whenever something calls out for more attention, to smile or nod at the many passersby sitting high and proud on their upright bikes. Such a total sensory immersion allows for greater intimacy with a country and its people than you could ever get from behind the window of car, bus, or train. Holland has sunk into my bones. I look forward to returning one day.

It doesn't take long to clear ourselves of the city's busy-ness. Past Scheveningen we enter the Hollands Duin, beautiful wild dune lands spotted with lakes and the occasional beech forest. There's another interesting story here about how the Dutch work with water. In the 19th century, the city of Den Haag drew from these sweet water lakes to service its growing population. By the 20th century the lakes were going dry and the remaining water no longer good to drink. Since the Dutch are good at moving water around, they started diverting water from the river that flows through the city back into these lakes. The water filters through the sand base, where it's collected as sweet clean water that can be used by the city residence. Thus these wetlands are sustained both for wildlife and human needs by a bit of clever Dutch ingenuity.

It's Sunday and the fietspad and walk trails are full of people. A sense of nostalgia accompanies our ride as memories of all the places we've seen and stayed waft through our memories. It's hard to imagine not getting up every day to go on a long bike ride to some new destination.

We take an instant liking to Haarlem. In 1202, the city got its start with a population of just 9,000 people. For the next seven centuries its residents numbered in the tens of thousands. Today it sits around 160,000, still big but not as overwhelming as The Hague (800k+) and Amsterdam (2m+). Back in the 1800s, when Amsterdam's waterways were getting too putrid (fresh sewage and other garbage), the rich moved to Haarlem, which got dubbed the "bedroom community" of Amsterdam. Today, it appears to still be so: full of elegant two and three story houses dating around the 19th and early 20th centuries, lovely old parks, and a thriving center that's managed to keep its old world charm -- and the towering sky-scrapers out.

The massive De Grote of St. Bavokerk te Haarlem, a five hundred year old gothic style church plopped in the center of the town square, is currently surrounded by vibrant outdoor restaurants and bars, cackling with people. Back in the 18th century, Mozart and Handel visited the church to play its phenomenal organ. "Let's go inside," I proclaim, having seen a u-shaped arrow leading around the church to an entrance. A placard in front of the formidable wooden doors announces evening Vespers services at 7pm on Sundays throughout the summer. We're in luck! It's Sunday and it's 6:45pm! We accept the offered program, find a seat midway back and take in the august surroundings.

Three white-robed women line up holding musical scores. A suited man stands at a small organ. A black-robed young priest sits to the side. As the service commences, all in Dutch, the three sopranos send their a capella chants high into the rafters -- angelic. Midway through the service, the centrepiece: the Invocatio: "Dona Nobis Pacem" for viola and organ, composed by Heinz Wunderlich (1919-2012). The female violist and a hidden organist playing the grand church pipes toggle stanzas of one of the most moving organ pieces we've heard. The music sails through the church interior, singing off its thick stone walls and landing smack in the center of our beings.

We're not quite sure how to move or to be in this world when it all comes to an end. But our original intent was to find a place for a final dinner, the last supper of our trip. Re-entering the exterior world, with all its noise and distractions, food and alcohol, and people making merry on a Sunday summer's eve takes some time and a reality check (which was more real??). But eventually we find an elegant Indonesian restaurant with a sumptuous menu and a quiet outdoor setting. We toast a round to the last night of our amazing journey.

Johan and I aren't city folk. We've spent the better part of our adult lives in country towns, minus the five years living in Fremantle when we ran a newspaper business. Thus, when we travel, we tend to avoid the big cities. Though we have spent time in Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin and Munich -- and managed a good time without too much stress.

We've also spent the last nearly four weeks winding our way through the rural countryside and towns of the Netherlands so our fitness for urban reality is not good. Still, we thought it fun to spend a weekend in The Hague, slightly more manageable in size than Rotterdam or Amsterdam, plus there's a jazz festival on.

We cycle in to the centrum just past noon. Our aim is to tour the grand buildings of The Hague before heading out to the jazz festival in Scheveningen. Turns out it's Veterans Day in the Netherlands and the planned parade through the city center has resulted in many blocked streets, including the ones we need to get through to visit the grand buildings. We watch the festivities -- long lines of marching veterans from every war the Dutch have ever fought in the current living generations. Old men with their crook backs and rumpled faces, blue suits decked out with whatever metals of honor they achieved during their time of service, waving gnarled hands at the crowds. Overhead three WWII fighter planes fly over and the crowd cheers. Then three military helicopters, their thrumming blades offbeat with the marching boots. Finally, six present day military aircraft flying in precise formation, ear-splitting roars that drown out even the marching band. Is this a festive fly-over or a show of military might? (Putin, are you watching?)

The streets of The Hague are crammed with walkers, bicyclists, cars, motorbikes, strollers, skateboarders, roller skaters, old people in electric golf carts. Like any big city these days, the crowd is an amalgamation of multiple ethnicities, the result of mass migration over the past decade or two as the East flows into the West. The quintessential Dutch, with their wide eyes, unblemished fair skin and feathery straight hair, is lost in this sea of Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Latin American  and lots of hybrid faces. The new melting pot.

The buzz of the city is invigorating -- for a while. Tall buildings, ancient and new, narrow streets, endless shops, outdoor cafes and food shops -- so many! -- and bands and waves of people, flowing in and around each other like a trail of busy ants. The only way to manage the chaos is to go with the flow -- and then suddenly it's not chaos anymore and surprisingly few accidents happen. (We learned this driving motorbikes in Chiang Mai and now riding bicycles in Holland!) When it's time for lunch, we park the bikes and take to walking through the malls where only pedestrians and bikers are allowed.

We never manage to cross the barricades to the grand buildings, so instead we cycle to Scheveningen to check out the jazz festival. The "Jazz Flavors" music turns out to be a fusion of jazz, dance and popular music -- some good listening, some worth dancing to, all of it loud. One stage is in an old church, gutted of pews and props of its nearly four centuries of Christian service. The festival organisers haven't provided chairs so the crowd -- many of whom are over 60 -- are standing, beers in hand, craning their necks to see the band. The acoustics in the church -- built to swallow the hallowed music of organs and cantor choirs -- is appallingly bad for loud jazz. We sit at the very back -- what was once the sacred sanctuary -- amongst other older couples who are coveting the few available chairs.

The second stage is outside in the church tuin (garden), where the music bounces off the circle of three story apartment buildings surrounding the church. People of every age are dancing to Massada, a high-energy marimba band very popular with the Dutch in the 1980s. The musicians are now past their prime but still jiving with great rhythms and good syncopation.

But it's starting to drizzle -- as forecast -- which soon turns to rain. We put on our rain gear. Others huddle under umbrellas or just stand out and get wet in it. Many go home. The next band is late starting and the lead guy tells us all to go inside until they're ready -- 20 minutes? Inside a black man with long dreadlocks and a bright red and orange jersey is playing his trumpet -- improvisational, impromptu. A highlight of the festival.

We skip the last two shows and mount our bikes for a soggy ride back to the B&B. It's been a mixed-bag sort of day.

Do you find you have trouble walking after riding the bicycle? Johan asks during an evening stroll. We're walking unevenly down the street, occasionally bumping into each other. Our wobbly walking isn't caused by the beer we just consumed. After 24 days on a bike, often five or six hours a day, we're suffering from overdeveloped bicycling muscles and underdeveloped walking muscles. It's become hard to walk a straight line.

As we leave the island of Voorne-Putten and make our way to Westland, we discover the bridge over the Briese Meer is closed. Has been for a few months now, says a sporting bicyclist who is kind enough to stop and ask two stranded and dumbfounded touring bicyclists if they're lost. Follow the yellow "5" signs, he says. It'll take you round the back end of Rozenburg and on to the ferry to Maasluis.

Turns out the back end of Rozenburg is an industrial superpower the likes of which I'd never seen. Or certainly ridden a bike through. But even in this entirely artificial world of steel and concrete, refineries and factories, the fietspad finds its place, winding through this industrial terrain with the same kind of unobstructed freedom of city and country bike paths. The sensory overload is overwhelming and I feel myself shrinking in fear and revulsion, as often happens to sensitive types in such harsh environments. But instead of shutting down, I look out and marvel at the fierce audacity of man's technology. Generation upon generation of builders wiping out the natural environment for its own enterprising interests. Impersonal, hard-edged, defiant in its right to do whatever it can, is capable of, to further its own interests and growth.

And yet, hidden in amongst this austere greyness: pockets of green. Surviving. Indefatigable. In a quiet edge of the churning locks where the mighty flatbed river boats take their turns: a bank of swans, oblivious to man's activity. Preening, ducking, courting, floating. And along the road edge, the untiring resilience of greenery, miniature fields of wild flowers swaying their subtle blues and reds, oranges and whites against a backdrop of steaming grey towers.

And an intersection, full with traffic and deafening trucks. Two stranded bicyclists unsure where to go next. Three street workers, brilliant orange vests. Johan leans over to ask the woman: which way to the Maasluis ferry? She smiles and points and gives us a host of directions. And the two men walk out in the street, arms raised, stopping traffic while they wave us through. Such kindness in a world of mechanistic indifference.

Maasluis appears across the wide river as an ancient dream of a once proud village at the end of the long-journeying Rhine, its sacred steeple and old wooden port standing defiant to the progress of high rise housing encroaching on its small town charm.

We sail across the water and through its crickety cobblestone streets, to the wide canal passing through its sweet center. Crowds are forming on the edge and a man in sailor-suit white is standing high on a podium talking to the crowd in a commanding yet jovial voice. The canal is full with boats, colourfully decorated with flowers and fruit and props created to accompany the theme of the boats and the gaily costumed people aboard, waving at the crowd. Some kind of water parade! Such fun to watch as they sail in a row, under the raised bridge, proud as swans on a Sunday sail.

After a brief visit with Johan's sister and brother-in-law in Maasland (we'll be seeing more of them next week) we head northwest towards Den Hague. The path winds through picturesque farm fields, upmarket canal homes, an unexpected forest of cooling creeks and tree canopies, and finally into the urban density of The Hague's suburbs. Our B&B is a 10 minute walk to the beach so we head out in search of a Friday evening beer.

Kijkduin Strand (beach) is full of other revelers seeking that end-of-week solace. And a perfect night it is: balmy warm, a slip of a breeze, magnificent displays of thunderclouds, and a fruity orange sun slipping slowly into the North Sea. It doesn't get nicer than this.

After crossing back over the Haringvlietbrug this morning, far less treacherous at 10am, we head west across the Goeree-Overflakkee, the parrot-shaped island that sits between the Haringvliet and Grevelingen rivers, two outflows of the Waal. It's exceedingly more quiet, with tranquil farm fields inland and grassy marshlands on the water side, home to hundreds of geese, ducks, and other shore birds.

Johan's right of course: the river delta of southern Holland is fascinating, both for its manufactured reality, and the copious amount of natural habitat still left (or preserved) for water birds, mostly migratory. Mapping the rivers that originate deep inside Europe, it's clear that the Netherlands is, and was always meant to be, the marshy swamp where these rivers converge to flow into the sea. The amount of ingenuity, hard work, and just plain pluck it took for generations of Dutchman to turn their soggy land into a habitable homeland is awe-inspiring. They lead the world in taming the mighty power of water.

But it's not always a good news story. In one town we learn that much of the island was flooded during WWII when the occupying Germans ditched the dikes with the express purpose of inundating the land. Never mind the people who were living there or the farmers growing their crops. It was the Germans ploy to keep the Allied forces from using the island as a landing strip. The plucky Dutch, however, understandably frantic about living in knee-deep water, managed to convince the German soldiers to allow them to build dikes that would segregate off sections of the land for them to live on. Those who didn't leave the island during this time huddled together in these polders until the war was over.

Another town's signs tell us of the horrific floods of 1953 -- the one Johan viscerally remembers as a three year old boy, who's father was responsible for ensuring the lock near the home on the Oranjekanal would hold as the waters rose -- that saw the waters of the Haringvliet river breach the dike and flood the land. Over 500 island inhabitants lost their lives.

The present dikes are twice the height of those that protected the island nearly 70 years ago. New technology has also been established to work with the water, rather than against it, allowing highly regulated sections of the island to be flooded if hazardous storms come in order to save other built areas, houses, towns and industrial areas.

By 3pm the thermometre has reached its peak for the day, 28°C. The heaviness of the moisture-laden air matches my energy -- it's time to stop at an appealing cafe at the nose of the Oudoorp harbor, with full views of the Grevelingenmeer and the happy Dutch kids playing in the water on this hot day. The chalices of Affligem Blond go down well to cool us off and quench our thirst.

Things change again. Cycling through Raamsdonksveer, we circle around the imposing coal power plant, a symbol of the high energy percolating in this part of Holland: highways clogged with trucks and traffic, ramrod steel towers -- telecommunications, smoke stacks, silos, cranes -- thrice the size of the old church steeples, industrial complexes and high rise apartment buildings stuck incongruously in an otherwise agrarian setting. The whirl of energy -- noise, movement, smells, distractions -- unravels the sensory delight of yesterday's pleasure ride.

Over dinner last night at our B&B (a variety of cold salads from the deli section of the local supermarket) Johan tells me about his early training as a civil engineer. In this third or fourth year he was required to do a four-month practicum and was assigned to a new highway being built just south of Willemstad on the Maas River. It was roughly 1970 and he was 20 years old. Willemstad is around 50kms from Maasland, his family home, which was a long way to commute in those days. So he booked to stay in the Willemstad Hotel, Monday through Thursday, traveling home on his motorbike after work on Friday. He tells me he learned to drive in these months, taking lessons in an VW Beetle with manual transmission from an instructor in Breda.

We try to book a room in this hotel, now called the Het Wapen van Willemstad, but the ancient fortress town has turned into a tourist and boating mecca and there were no rooms to be found anywhere. So instead we sit on the outdoor terrace of the hotel and drink beer, along with many other pleasure-seeking visitors. The world was different back in 1970 -- Johan doesn't remember any tourists in those days. His room was on the corner of the first floor and he came down every morning for a boiled egg breakfast and again every night for dinner. There were other workers staying at the hotel, but they pretty much kept to themselves. It was a lonely four months, focused exclusively on work, not pleasure.

Fifty years on, the engineering career didn't really go as planned, but Johan has had some marvelous life adventures, including this one: bicycling through the old haunts of his home country.

The nearest bed we can find for the night is in Numansdorp, across a rush-hour packed bridge over the Maas -- bumper-to-bumper trucks outnumbering cars five to one -- with a side lane reserved for local traffic, motorbikes and bicycles. It's treacherous and crowded and stressful. Below us the mighty Maas is broken by an industrial size lock passing massive river boats through.

Vanmorgen nam Sui, twijfelend, een stukje beschuit van het mandje met broodjes dat de gast dame ons voor’t ontbijt had gegeven. Ze had mij gevraagd hoe dat zou smaken. Probeer het maar, zei ik. Met boter? Ja, met boter en iets zoetigs of een schijfje kaas. Mmmm, ja, dat had geen duidelijk herkenbare smaak, zei ze.
 
Reizende door Nederland krijgen we vaak ontbijt bij onze overnachting. Een aantal dingen zijn veelal hetzelfde: verschillende soorten broodjes, twee soorten kaas, twee soorten vlees beleg, boter natuurlijk, jam, een gekookt eitje, koffie of thee, yoghurt, verschillende soorten jam. Soms fruit. Soms muesli. En bijna altijd Van Ruijter chocolade hagelslag, donker en lichter bruin. Ook witte
en roze korreltjes. En chocolade vlokken, als dit de juiste benaming er voor is. En Nutella.
 
Als kind vond ik deze zoete broodbeleggingen altijd heerlijk. Maar ík heb ondertussen geleerd dat mijn herinneringen van wat vroeger lekker was niet altijd overeenstemt met mijn huidige voorkeuren en ervaringen. Het is vaak te zoet. Soms is de smaak te zwak. Soms is het niet eens echt lekker. En ook soms is het heerlijk zoals zoete koek met dik boter.
 
Na een uurtje fietsen, als we door een dorp komen, stoppen we voor een kopje koffie. Soms nemen we er iets bij, en dat wordt dan meestal een stukje appelgebak. Van jaren terug heb ik heerlijke herinneringen aan vers gebakken appelgebak. Niets is zo lekker als een bruine knappige korst, sappig gekookte zoete appels en vers geklopte slagroom. Maar het schijnt zelden meer te bestaan. Vanmorgen stopten we in Tiel en ik bestelde bij de koffie weer appelgebak met slagroom. Ik kon het niet laten, ben altijd op zoek naar die ene echte verrukkelijke appelgebak. En ja hoor, dit was een van de betere appelgebakken die ík geproefd heb. Maar toch… Mijn jonge kinder herinneringen kunnen zo mooi zijn maar de tijd doet er mee wat het wil.
 
Deze morgen stond ik vroeg op, nog voor de zon op was. De oosterse hemel begon net oranje en geel te kleuren. We zijn in een hotelletje direct aan de Waal rivier met uitzicht op het water. Na een tijdje lopen over de rivierdijk liep ik naar beneden de dijk af om dichter bij het water te zijn. Daar vond ik een plaatsje op het einde van een pier om even met het stromende rivier water stil te zijn. Ik was aan drie kanten omringd door water. Duwboten begonnen weer langs te komen met hun diep liggende vrachten op weg naar Duitsland. Een heerlijk momentje, en nauw verbonden met mijn jeugd herinneringen. In dit geval was er nauwelijks verschil tussen wat ik nog weet van het wonen aan de Nieuwe Waterweg nabij Hoek van Holland gedurende de eerste tien jaar van mijn leven en deze vredige plek aan de rivier.

English translation:

This morning Sui, hesitantly, took a piece of beschuit (rusk) from the basket of mixed  breads that the guest lady had given us for breakfast. She asked me what that would taste like. Try it, I said. With butter? Yes, with butter and something sweet or a slice of cheese. Mmmm, yes, that didn't have a clearly recognizable taste, she said.
 
Traveling through the Netherlands we often get breakfast with our overnight stay. A number of things are often the same: different types of breads, two types of cheese, two types of bread, meat, butter of course, a boiled egg, coffee or tea, yogurt, different types of jam. Sometimes fruit. Sometimes muesli. And almost always Van Ruijter chocolate sprinkles, dark and lighter brown. Also white and pink sweet hagelslag (granules). And a kind of chocolate flakes. And Nutella spread.
 
As a child, I always loved these sweet sandwich spreads and sprinkles. But I’ve realized that my memories of what used to be so tasty do not always correspond with my current preferences and experiences. Often it is too sweet. Sometimes the taste is too weak. Sometimes it's not even really nice. But also sometimes it is delicious such as ontbijtkoek (sweet cake) with thick butter.
 
After an hour of cycling, when we pass through a village, we stop for a cup of coffee. We may get something with it, and often we order a piece of apple pie. From years ago I have wonderful memories of freshly baked apple pie. Nothing is as delicious as a brown crispy crust, juicy cooked sweet apples and freshly whipped cream. But it rarely seems to exist anymore. This morning we stopped in Tiel and again I asked for apple pie with whipped cream. I couldn't resist; I'm always looking for that one real delicious apple pie that I remember. And yes, this was one of the better ones that I have yet tasted. But still... My young boyhood memories can be so attractive and beautiful but time does with it what it wants.
 
This morning I got up early, before the sun was up. The eastern sky was just beginning to turn a dark orange and yellow. We are staying in a hotel directly on the Waal river with a view over the water. After walking along the river dike for a while, I took a little trail down the dike to be closer to the water. There I found a place at the end of a pier to be quiet with the flowing water. The water surrounded me on three sides. Push boats had started to move along the river again with their deep lying cargoes on their way to Germany. It was a wonderful moment, and closely linked to my childhood memories. Now there was hardly any difference between what I remember of living along the Nieuwe Waterweg near Hoek van Holland during the first ten years of my life and sitting here in this peaceful place on the edge of the Waal river.

When planning for this trip, Johan was keen to take in the river country in the south. I was skeptical. I'd seen the hyper-industrialized port of Rotterdam, a human-made, hi-tech world of outsized ships and dikes and industrial cranes with little remnants of nature. Fascinating to see what humans are up to in this epoch of their history -- but otherwise not my cup of tea.

Southern Holland is also more densely populated than the north. It's true, when we left the forested "high" country and crossed the bridge over the Rhine, we traveled alongside busy highways and through built-up areas that felt like the oppressive hand of man's technological prowess clamping down on our joie de vivre of the open countryside we'd just emerged from.

But things changed. We soon left that pocket of busy-ness and returned to the countryside, with bicycle paths that wove through the quaint villages and green land, fields of potatoes in bloom, corn that seemed to grow an inch each day, and now, in this region, fruit trees. Long lines of espaliered apple, pear, cherry and plum. And water everywhere! The wide rivers and their tributaries, lakes, and channels weaving with as much playfulness as our bicycle path.

Today is panoply of sensory impressions as we ride through ever-changing landscae: peering down at fanciful Dutch domiciles tucked cozily into the dike, with their secret paths leading to shaggy green gardens; the chorus of bird calls as we pass under the canopy of sculpted beech, suddenly appearing to break the monotony of farm fields; the sweet smell of fresh cut grass mingling with the ever-present cow dung; a castle, 16th century, sprouting out of the landscape as though ignorant of the modern world, a grand green coloured moat crossed by a wooden drawbridge; a sudden stop at a small paddock where a ram rests, his stately horizontal horns twisted like a narwhal's tusk -- a sign tells us these are racka schaap, an ancient breed of Hungarian sheep, rarely found anymore; a sculpture in a small town of a man and woman dancing naked down a river; three workers on scaffolding building a thatch roof, mesmerizingly slow and methodical, an ancient art.

The road into Heusden, halfway through our cycling day, follows a curiously shaped wetlands, were swans nest. We  learn that the wetlands are actually a carefully sculpted moat surrounding this town that was originally settled in 1202. A castle was constructed in the early 14th century, built as a fortress with a peculiar moat that resembles a geometrically designed crest. We walk around the top of the green embankments but it's impossible to get a sense of the design. The aerial view is much more impressive.

We ride through the clunky cobblestone streets of the ancient town, following Google Maps on our phone to keep on course. Our eyes quickly spot the "IJs" on the electronic map and we follow the trail to the town's only ice cream shop. The jolly Dutchman behind the counter is happy to have customers from Australia. We take our double-dip cones to the outdoor tables and yes -- this is definitely THE BEST ice cream experience I've ever had. Seriously good. Creamy, rich, and delicious. I want another bol (scoop) -- perhaps the mango this time? -- but am too embarrassed to go inside and order one. Johan's happy to feed my cravings and steps back into the shop while I crunch the last bit of cone. He comes out smiling and hands me the cup of sweet orange delight. He gave you this for free, he says. Why? He just likes that we're Australian and that you love his ice cream so much. Thank you, Mr Ice Cream Man -- you just sent me to heaven!

We're stopped by another sign that tells us the fietspad is closed for repair, so we take a nearby ferry and cross to the north side of the Waal, ride for 10kms and take another ferry to get to the south side, close to Ramsdonk where our next B&B is.

Our beautiful B&B: an old rustic renovated farmhouse:

We've returned to the water. This time the "riverlands," the confluence of three major rivers -- the Rhine, Waal, and Maas -- that pass through the Netherlands and empty into the sea near Rotterdam and Zeeland. We cross the Rhine via a bridge just outside of Rhenen. South of Tiel, an unhappy and disheveled city where we stop at for morning coffee, we cross the Waal by bicycle ferry. We share the boat with a friendly Dutch couple who are out on a four-day bicycle tour. The woman is wearing a colourful cap with "New Zealand" written across the front and she loves hearing that we're from Australia; she has a friend in New Zealand who gave her the hat. Later we learn that she was born in Maasland, Johan's boyhood village where his sister and brother still live. She thinks she knows the Korpershoeks, Henny's husband's family.

We park ourselves on a bench for lunch after disembarking the ferry and watch it make its haphazard journey back and forth, skillfully dodging the duw bouten, long, low barges steered from the back used for carrying cargo up and down the river. The fietspad winds back up onto the dike, with beautiful views of the river for the short ride into Rossum.

We stop at the locks just before Rossum. A man-made canal connects the Waal to the lower Maas at this juncture where the rivers are closest. The formidable wall of the lock slowly ascends like a great entrance to a medieval castle. Once inside, the barge rises with the inflow of water from the higher river, then exits the lock for another barge waiting to be lowered to the Maas. It's a mesmerizing work in slow motion and we spend three quarters of an hour watching.

De Goude Molen, our hotel for the night comes into view as we round the corner into Rossum. A quaint and picturesque hotel astride the dike with a terrace restaurant and views of the river. The couple with roots in Maasland that we'd met on the ferry are on the terrace when we head there for a late afternoon beer. We share a lively, friendly exchange that ends in multiple hand waves as they take off on their bikes to their hotel in Zaltbommel. It's good to have some social time again with someone besides each other (much as we enjoy each other's company!)

Staying in a hotel is nice. Less personal than a B&B but more autonomous. Our room is on the first floor, high enough to see over the dike, with a view of the river and the train of long barges doing their slow crawl up the river, deep into the night.