Day 7:  7th July 2025  Venlo - Den Bosch  65 miles

A day working my way along the Maas, mostly - because I decided to take some sensible short cuts to pare off some of the bends in the river. By this stage of its run, the river is meandering back and forth on itself quite a bit. My target was to get to my AirBandB in Den Bosch / 's-Hertogenbosch (not sure why it has two names), which is where Hieronymus Bosch the painter is from / lived / worked. There is a museum here with lots of his paintings, although I can’t say that I’m too keen on his stuff that I have seen, too busy, too much going on, lots of little people dancing around and doing all sorts of unmentionable activities. I hope I’m not doing him an injustice. It’s a lovely town, nicely preserved, indeed the place I’m staying says the building is originally from the 15th century. It's called De Gulden Angel / The Golden Eagle, and says so above the door, as does every house have its name over its door. Which is what they evidently did before street numbers came along. Think Bruges or Ghent, more or less. Looks upmarket, and quite chichi, with a proliferation of hipster barber shops, and very upend bicycle shops, and a lovely cheese shop just over the road from me. And next door to it, what I think is a pot shop and smoking joint. I won’t get much chance to look around, because I have to be off early tomorrow to make my way further north to The Hook of Holland to get my ferry back home across The North Sea. But, it is a place that I can see myself returning to in the future.

The weather was blustery, breezy, with passing small storms for most of the day, and unfortunately, unlike yesterday when I was bowled along by a tail wind, today the wind was in my face which made for some tough riding. At least there were no hills. Just some rain and a headwind, so two out of three of a cyclist’s bug bears. I was fuelled by the Campanile breakfast, which wasn’t great, but gave me the advantage of being able to prepare a couple of sandwiches for my lunch along the way, which I had in some church grounds, where I saw my first two Dutch young louts smoking dope and, I imagine, swearing profusely in Dutch. The part of the country I’ve been through looks as though it is Catholic, with lots of large churches, and also religious buildings and monasteries, very dominant in the small towns. I passed a place just over the river after I’d taken one of the small Maas ferries that crisscross the river, a place called Steyl, which was dominated by a series of vast 19th century religious houses and the mother house of the Divine Word Missionaries. And then a couple of other places where religious and missionary groups had their bases. Other parts of The Netherlands are Calvinist / Protestant, including the House of Orange monarchy (hence William of Orange / Battle of the Boyne etc), but I’m sure they are get along swimmingly these days. I imagine, like most churches, they are all struggling for bums on seats these days. Who pays for the heating bills for those massive 19th century edifices, I am not sure. For the first part of the morning I was following the Asparagus Route. Asparagus seems to be a big thing in that part of the world. Maybe it's to do with the sandy soil. I think the asparagus season has passed by now, so what you see in the fields are plants being left to grow and produce seeds for the next crop. I think.

I ate Indonesian food tonight in Den Bosch, a beef rending, and a couple of local beers. There are lots of different beers available in this part of the world, with an emphasis on high alcohol content beers, say three times the percentage of a normal beer at home. So, you need to check the label carefully ! The Dutch were colonial masters of Indonesia, and along with the Belgians and their African colonies, did not prove to be the best of colonialist. They were pretty rapacious and wicked. Which begs the question about the British Empire ! We did bring cricket to India and Pakistan, though !

Tomorrow will be more River Maas, where I can follow it, as it begins to spread out as it approaches the coast. I’ll pass through Rotterdam and then on to The Hook. The ferry isn’t until 10 pm, so I should have plenty of time. I might delay my departure until after 9 am so I can have a look around the cheese shop over the road !