Wijk to Hoek van Holland

During the night a vengeful wind god cooked up a sort of pampiro for me. When I woke up, the trees were in what Laura calls the Downward Dog yoga position, which is to say their tips were almost touching the ground and they looked in pain. I turned to face the wind god and set off, making a mental note always to ride eastwards if I'm ever in Holland again. Let me tell you about riding into the wind - the furious roaring in the ears, the feeling that life is just one big uphill, and then there's what it does to your hairdo, which can become quite wild if you need a haircut. I was riding on the dike-top head-first into this invisible wall of air with nothing between me and the North Sea but 100 miles of perfectly flat land - if it had been any flatter it would have been shiny. At least it was sunny. If the gods wanted to play hardball then so be it, bring it on. All I had to say to them was Lekker! They huffed and they puffed, bits fell off trees, white surf skipped across rivers, and all the parked bikes in the Netherlands wobbled and fell over. The wind strengthened and my speed went from a pathetic 10mph to 9mph, then by late afternoon 8mph if I was lucky. I'd like to say that the wind god caused widespread destruction to civilisation but that would be exaggerating, especially as I was on the barbarian side of the river anyway. I met a German family on one of the many ferries en route. They'd followed the river on their bikes from Cologne. They weren't wearing any lycra cycling gear so I felt an instant affinity with them and it was good to have the 'Windy, isn't it?' 'Yes, awfully.' conversation, with plenty of hyperbole and superlatives because no-one else would ever understand just how windy it was (have I mentioned the wind?) when we told the story later on. Now I don't own any lycra - if I want to look like I'm naked then I'll just take my clothes off, thanks. Nor do I shave my legs and rub vaseline into them because I think it'll make me go faster. I think cycling gear is a fetishistic chimera, although I'm not exactly sure what I mean by that. However, I wouldn't cycle in my jeans for more than, say, the length of one European country, which is what this family had done. The lad, Simon, had those jeans that young people wear these days to give Victor Meldrew an extra thing to rail against - the sort that look like they're going to fall completely off the hips at any moment. Simon's jeans were quite stressful to look at because they looked like they were right on the edge, especially given the wind's aggravating effect on the situation. It was a bit like when (and I don't know if you've been in this situation) the base of Grandma's finest porcelain vase is half off the kitchen table at the very moment of a minor earthquake and for some reason you find your hands are full of washing. Anyway, they were a super family, just mum and two teenage kids and three big smiles. The trip was mum's idea and the kids thought it was a great one so off they went with Germany's biggest family tent on their bikes and I expect a foldaway kitchen sink - and the daughter seemed to have quite an extensive wardrobe, too. This expeditionary equipment was all covered in great waterproof sheets, resembling sails that the wind god must have loved toying with when he wasn't busy vexing me. Anyway, I was sure they weren't going to make it as I was only making 8mph with 18km to go and I was feeling tired even without a sail hanging off the back of my bike. In fact they did make it, about an hour after me (which means they must have been travelling at about 5mph). I think they made it on smile power alone, they had plenty of that. At the campsite we had a good long chat in English, German and Spanish about just about everything except the wind.

The next day I left early after a night of thunder and lightnings right overhead (very exciting). The wind had dropped a notch from Blind Fury to Mere Rage but bits were still falling off trees etc etc. I fahrted about (this is German for 'travel', I think) in Dordrecht for a while but it was a bit touristy and commercial (apart from a beautiful line of old boats - see yesterday's photo). Then the route took me past the long row of thatched-roof windmills that are on all the postcards of Holland - lots of Japanese people taking photos. I didn't take one (a photo, not a Japanese) because I didn't think you'd be interested. People live in the windmills - how perfect is that? - and the sails still work and move so fast they look like they're going to fall off. The sail arms almost touch the ground too so it's best to stay back if you like your own head where it is. I'd always assumed that these windmills were for grinding wheat but they're actually for draining catch-water basins. The mechanism was designed to turn a 6m diameter underground water wheel, like an impeller pump, to scoop up the water from one pool and dump it into another just 1.5m higher. From there the water could be drained into the river and sent out to sea. It turns out that Holland has been digging itself into a hole for the last 1,000 years. It used to be marshland, suitable for hunting but not for organised agriculture. To make the transition and also to combat rising sea levels and poor drainage, the people dug out the marshes and protected them from the sea with dikes. This released a lot of new land for cultivation and with the wealth thus created they dug ever deeper and wider holes until, as now, half of the Netherlands and well over half the population is in a hole below sea level (whoops-a-daisy) and all the rainwater has to pumped out. If the sea flooded the country there might not be any way to get it back. It'd be like Atlantis. In 1953 part of Holland did flood when a large sea swell helped along by a spring tide rose over some of the dikes and washed them away. Nearly 2,000 people died. This led to a special commission that made proposals for strengthening the flood defences. Dikes were raised and strengthened, the coastline was shortened by 300km and huge tidal barriers were constructed across each river mouth in the delta. The barrier I passed near Hoek van Holland spans a gap in the estuary of over 360m (a quarter of a mile in old money). In the event of a flood warning (about once every five years) huge steel gates float out across the mouth of the estuary and then sink to the bottom to stop the tidal swell. Apparently there's a special water tax to pay for all this engineering. Meanwhile the Dutch enjoy some of most fertile land in any temperate climate in the world. They seem to use it to grow a lot of sweetcorn and horses. Climate change is their big headache now and the Netherlands is one of the greatest producers of carbon dioxide in the world for its size, so there's something for them to think about there. That's quite enough of that.

I went through Rotterdam without stopping. Lots of shops, traffic and concrete. Nuff said. This left only the ride down the riverbank to the Rhine's final destination, the North Sea (a 688-mile ride from Basel including the getting-lost excursions). From the ferry window the industry lining the coast - oil refineries, wind turbines, docks and factories - looked strangely beautiful in the hazy pink of the setting sun. A new friend I met on the boat, Marloes (who'd just ridden to Berlin on a bike that had a basket decorated with little red plastic flowers) said that maybe industry is its own sort of natural. I liked Marloes.

Alone again and looking over the sea I felt free and relaxed. After just two weeks of the journey, the things that mattered mattered again and the things that didn't didn't and I felt a new sense of the possible. I hoped that this feeling would survive, like a fragile flower, the journey back into England - into London and the working week, past the anaesthesia of the in-your-face ad hoardings, the striplights of the supermarket, the tube ride home and the radio news that seems the same each day. That feeling never does survive for long but I'll try to keep it for as long as I can anyway. Maybe I'll find it again next time I ride over the Thames at dusk if I remember to look up from the road.