Ravenswaaij, Holland: Mr Sunshine on my shoulder

August 2, 2015

YES, it's actual: everything is satisfactual. The sun has shone and the wind, or at any rate the breeze, has turned in the right direction.

I wasn't the only one to think so. This was Sunday and bike clubs were passing every few minutes at times, some one way and some the other. All were neatly turned out in identical uniforms, all talking more loudly than they realised. Few waved. Belgian and Dutch cyclists rarely wave. I try but it doesn't work.

For a while I went back into Belgium. Ossendrecht is right on the border, and since neither borders nor roads are often straight, my way further into Holland entailed going back into Belgium first.

The Belgian border, out of one kingdom and into another

The difference between Belgian and Dutch roads is that in Belgium they're often bad without anybody caring while in Holland they have these wretched klinkers that everyone thinks look cute and rustic but after an hour shake the will to live out of you. They're not just uneven but they have dips and bumps that are unpredictable because the pattern of the herringbone tiles disguises them. The roads, usually in villages, have been subjected to loads they were never intended to carry.

Klinkers: they will all be torn up when I come to power

The villages came one after another, sometimes so close that the sign at the end of one village, where theoretically the speed limit ended, was across the road from the sign announcing the start of the second.

In time, though, I get into as much open countryside as densely populated Holland ever offers. There are woods which cast deep shadows and there are cropped corn fields that grin in the sun with whiskery chins. And three ferries today, reminding that Holland is low and crossed by rivers and canals and drainage ditches. I met a man who lived in Breda, far away from the coast yet only a metre higher than sea level, who called his house "Sea View". One day, he said, the sea dykes would break, the North Sea would rush in and Breda would be flooded.

"It's always best to look on the positive side," he said with black Dutch humour.

Who could resist an invitation to coffee and apple tart?

Especially when the café provides a garden and sun-loungers

And then came two paths beside a large and popular fun park of some sort. The walkers were all obediently on the pedestrian side, ambling, talking, tugging children. All except two chubby girls of perhaps 14, who were waving at all the cyclists coming the other way.

I pinged my bell as I approached them from behind and they turned suddenly. The chubbier one, in a pink sleeveless top and a short black shirt, beamed and shouted "Good afternoon!"

Cyclists were their friends, it seemed.

I didn't see "Sea View" as I rode through Breda. But I saw the Hero jam factory, so I didn't miss all the important sights. One site I did see was the Polish war cemetery. It doesn't matter where you go in western Europe, you'll find the graves of Poles who died defending it. Their own country was occupied, and Poles were the most numerous nationality in the Nazi death camps, but they never gave up. They fought back at home and they escaped through Spain and Gibraltar and sometimes through Romania and the Middle East to form army, navy and air force units.

"You won the war - we lost it", Poles lamented after fighting on the winning side

Poles fought to liberate others, only to be betrayed themselves

There was a Polish squadron in the RAF. It downed more German planes than any other. I remember an RAF old-timer saying: "We just wanted to shoot down aircraft; the Poles wanted to kill Germans." They'd fly head-on at German planes, firing at the cockpit, and veer off only metres before a collision. Where the RAF ruling was to fire at 300 metres and then turn away, the Poles regularly went to 100.

"A bomber makes a very big target when you approach it from the side at that distance," the old RAF man said. A Spitfire flew at 400kmh. So the Poles pulled away 0.9 of a second before colliding.

And what did Britain do? It refused to allow Poles to take part in the post-war victory parade because Churchill had already agreed to give Poland to the Russians and didn't want to upset Stalin. The Poles were never given medals. They were just told to go home. For a large part, those who did go home were shot.

It was a shameful time.

I've tried to think why someone would build a horse beside a bike path, but...

Today's ride: 130 km (81 miles)
Total: 3,051 km (1,895 miles)

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