Yesterday Merel's lovely parents, Gerda and Jaap, picked me up early afternoon and took me into what is known as the Groene Hart (green heart) of the south-western Netherlands. It's an area of small villages, farms and many waterways, now protected from inappropriate development or encroachment by the big cities of the Randstadt on its western fringe (though scanning a few URLs I get the impression that it may still be under threat). Much of the area consists of 'polders' - areas that were once lake but were reclaimed, many in the sixteenth century, using windmills, dykes for protection and canals to channel the water. The roads meandered, not much more than a single lane wide. The landscape was leafy, green and watery with long, flat vistas broken by the occasional slender church spire on the horizon. Ideal for cyclists. The houses all backed onto water and each house had its boat. It was very quiet - day-trippers and tourists discouraged perhaps by the unseasonally grey weather.
As we made our way back towards Den Haag when passed through a huge area of nurseries - plants, shrubs, trees - on a scale I couldn't possibly have imagined. Acres and acres and acres. As Gerda said, they probably supply much of western Europe, and I could believe it. Everything so neat and organised - this a hallmark of what I have seen of the country in general.
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| Ex windmill, now house |
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Gerda and Jaap at a coffee stop
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| House at the lock |
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| Coffee stop #2 |
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| Houseboats |
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| Owners of coffee stop #2 and the cow's legs |
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| Nursery |
