Bordering

on
 
Double

Dutch  


We pulled off he busy highway and into the well ordered neatness of the small Dutch town.

It was our first driving break after leaving the car ferry at Rotterdam. 
As we stretched our legs and breathed the continental air the smell of freshly baked bread and flowers drew us toward the town centre. 

At first I thought we had found a bike shop but it turned out to be a florist with all the customers’ bikes parked outside. 
We had a coffee next door and watched what seemed like a brightly coloured fashion parade as the locals came into buy cakes and pastries. Yellows and orange seemed to be favourite colours.

Queen's Day

You can gain a lot by timing 
your visit to a country to take 
in festivals or events.

Make  a point of being in Holland  on ‘Queens Day’. 

We did and visiting a number of towns,  found a great party spirit. 

There were bands playing, children in costume, decorated bikes, banner waving displays and civic dignitaries giving speeches or shaking hands with giant figures.

 

It’s the time when tables go out in the road and the whole of Amsterdam becomes one giant flea market. It’s a fun event.

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We drove over the famous bridge at Arnhem in Holland and found that all was quiet on the Western Front. 

A large Rhine hotel boat lay at anchor close to the spot where troops of The British Airborne Division heroically held the bridge against superior German forces for four days in one of the most impressive events of the liberation campaign of Western Europe.  

Today an anti tank gun with it's muzzle pointed to the far side of the bridge remains as a reminder and as a prop for tourist pictures.

Things have changed a lot and in this area if you can find a border post it will be  deserted and overgrown with weeds. The European Community is a fact and you have to look carefully to see where one country ends and another begins. The villages of Suderwick in Germany and Dinxperlo in Holland run one into the other with scarcely a join in the pavement.  

Certainly the atmosphere changes from one town to the other and the startlingly bright colours worn by of the Dutch girls on their bikes is replaced by a more muted tone in the case of the Frãuleins,  but all come up on you at a startling rate and you develop a nervous twitch waiting for the next  cyclist to whizz past your ear.  

We’d  been driving round Holland and learning fast that the language was anything but easy. 
The terms  ‘it’s all Dutch to me’ or ‘double Dutch’ are well deserved.  At first words.  like Kerk for kirk can  fool you into thinking you might  make sense of the lingo but I gave up kidding my self when I saw the 'wild rooster' signs at the entrance to the Netherlands National Forest park north of Arnhem.

At first I visualised aggressive male chickens attacking the bikers,  but  'wild rooster' means simply
“cattle grid.” They are there to keep the local fauna in it's place.

A very nice place it is too,  with loads of campsites and  plenty of tracks to explore. You can go on the hoof or join the multitude who cycle. In the midst of the forest we found the tiny village of  Kootwijk. Where statues of sheep graze, frozen in time,  on the green in front of the church  and Hansel and Gretal type houses are clustered round a little tea room  where ramblers pour over their maps.

We were making a point of avoiding the busy roads and followed a boy with fishing rod who cycled down a country trail past a windmill towards the river Ljssel. 
The chestnut tree lined lanes got narrower and just when we thought we would come to a dead end we found a little yellow ferry waiting to transport us across the river. It dodged between the huge barges that were pushing up a ferocious bow waves as they  force against the current. 

 We had crossed the river at  Brummen  and later in the day we found one of the big barges moored quietly at Doetinchem . It was called Deborah, and bore a banner that read 'T Pannerkoekschip’ ,  which means ‘pancake boat.’  It was in a pleasant backwater and the only current was the kind that might be found in the flavourings of pancakes.

We sat at our port hole looking out at the ducks  while girls in jeans with red wrap around aprons took orders for pancakes stuffed with apple, strawberries, cinnamon, bacon or what ever you wanted. While you wait to be served,  you find that paper place settings have a drawing of the barge that can  be coloured in with the crayons provided. Just the thing for the kids and intellectually challenged travel writers. 
We settled for the pancake of the month,  a concoction that included blaeberries and cost £4.90. It was delicious  but being dedicated to research I made the mistake of finishing off  with a Dame Blanche ( ice-cream and hot chocolate) I’m sure that the gangway buckled under our combined weight as we came ashore.