Day 24 - Den Haag

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.