Explore the land of tulips, The Netherlands, either on a bicycle or crusing on its canals.
Travelling by water and bicycle is the ideal way to see the Netherlands in full bloom, says Andrew Eames
Lying in my bed first thing in the morning, groggily awake, I switched on the TV. As one does. The Magnifique II had webcams fore, aft and amidships, and with the remote I was able to scroll through them in turn without even lifting my head from my pillow, relishing the lazy luxury of seeing the world just beyond the bulkheads.
Off the bows, the flags were hanging inert, the water mirror-calm. Off the beam, a moorhen was circling hungrily, perhaps with previous experience of a discarded croissant. On the stern, the tables and chairs had already been put out in the early morning sun. And then, in a bedroom, someone was being repeatedly stabbed... and now I was wide-awake.
It took me a moment to realise that, of course, I had scrolled a channel too far. My murder victim was not in the cabin next door, but being beamed aboard with the barge’s selection of satellite TV. My fellow travellers were hopefully all still alive.
Twenty minutes later up on the main deck, everyone was indeed present and correct, and breakfasting hard. The American schoolteachers, the accountants from Boston, the British financial director, and even the party of six female German doctors, with whom we’d been playing cards long into the night. Furthermore, there was a hum of subdued excitement, because after a couple of days of circling our prey like hungry predators, today was the day for swooping; there were tulips to see.
Tulip tourism is a long-established phenomenon, and the issue these days is how to approach it in a new and innovative way. Which is where the luxurious Magnifique II
comes in, with its hot tub on the roof, its threecourse dinners, and its state-of-the-art fleet of bikes.
Boat and bike tours are rapidly increasing in popularity. The boat is the floating hotel, relocating every day, while the bikes are for getting stuck into the fabric of the place. Given that the mother lode of tulip-growing also happens to have 3,100 miles of waterways and 22,000 miles of bike paths, choosing this method of exploration is a no-brainer.
Accordingly, UTracks’ five-day itinerary had attracted a very interesting cross-section of people, with barely a scrap of Lycra to rub between us.
Prior to the morning of our own tulip fever, we’d already covered a fair bit of ground.
The first day had involved an evening cruise to Zaandam, followed by a wander through the nursery rhyme architecture of its modern town centre.
The second day started with a morning cycle, past a parade of riverside cocoaprocessing plants smelling of bedtime drinks and on to picturesque Zaanse Schans, an openair museum with windmills, cheesemaking, clogs and herons hired by central casting to fish the ditches.
But that afternoon was when our tweewielers really started to come into their own, on our onward route to the city of Haarlem. Led by guide Arie, we cycled along dykes through agricultural land stitched with water, populated with lapwings and livestock, the crisp spring air fragrant with cow dung. We clattered down the cobbled streets of villages of gabled wooden houses that looked a bit like the upturned hulls of ships, dating back to a time when merchants had set off to trade with the New World.
Haarlem, when it emerged from the mist, turned out to be a mini Amsterdam without the stag parties, a place of brick-built cottages and gable ends on the waterside, and with a cobbled Grote Markt bounded by a 16thcentury Vleeshal (meat hall), a church and a city hall, all of them also looking like they had just stepped out of an Old Master.
And then came tulip day. As a morning prelude, the cycle southwards from Haarlem was past aristocratic mansions and fields of daffodils and hyacinths in searing strips of colour, like technicolour tablecloths spread out ready for a giant picnic. The sandy soil of this below-sea-level setting was perfect for tulips, explained Arie, but we were early in the season, so only a couple of blooms were popping their heads up as if to say: “I’m ready - where is everyone else?’’
Fortunately it all crescendoed nicely at the Keukenhof Gardens, where from late March to late May, rivers of colour, some garish, some delicate enough to make a grown man go weak at the knees, flow through woodlands and turn cartwheels in ornamental beds. Seven million bulbs are planted here every October and to wander through the result is to walk through a riot of nature’s colours. It is like a slow-motion firework display, with screaming yellow Giuseppi Verdi tulips spreading their petals indecently wide on one side, while fritillaria Early Magic are woven with hyacinths on the other, creating a tweedy floral tartan.
All in all it was inspiring stuff, and it turned out to be re-energising, too, as we ate up the miles back towards the boat. Someone up front started singing, When it’s spring again I’ll bring again/Tulips from Amsterdam, and the
Seven million bulbs are planted here every October and to wander through the result is to walk through a riot of nature’s colours
chorus rolled back through the peloton. Sitting at the back, I tried to rationalise the emotion engendered by a few — albeit quite a few — flowers. I am not a mad passionate gardener, and nor were 75 per cent of my fellow cyclists, and yet we’d all felt uplifted by that day’s visit. It was a question I hadn’t resolved by the time we were back in Haarlem, so I stopped off in the city’s Jopenkerk to seek a bit of spiritual guidance.
Sunlight was streaming through the church’s stained-glass windows, and bouncing off great copper vats. Where the altar once stood was a long gleaming bench, above which was listed, not psalms or hymns, but varieties of beer, all of them over 10 per cent strength. The Jopenkerk has found an unlikely new life as a microbrewery.
Defrocked though it was, I still found solace there. Over a goblet of Doubting Thomas, I hauled out my bible for this trip, Deborah Moggach’s Tulip Fever, and started to read: “Is it not strange, this madness that has gripped us?’’ asks Cornelis.
‘‘What madness?’’ asks the painter. “Have you surrendered to the passion yet?’’ The painter pauses. “It depends what passion you are talking about.’’
“This speculation on tulip bulbs!’’
“Ah,’’ the painter smiles. ‘‘Tulip bulbs.’’ Quite so. I’m with the painter - what is so wonderful about tulip bulbs? I don’t know whether it was the sunlight through the stained glass, or the time of day, but I had a revelation in the Jopenkerk. Our slice of tulip mania was not really about the flower; it was all about the timing, about the sharing of the delight over the return of colour to our lives after a long drab winter, and about the sense of hope that spring brings. The tulip was just the (brightly coloured) messenger.
Pleased with this moment of inspiration, I was enjoying the moment when I heard the church clock strike half an hour to dinner time.
So I jumped on my tweewieler, pedalled past the herring-selling vischwinkel and the slipper-shop selling spaanse sloffen back to the Magnifique II.
I was just in time to settle down to exuberant chef Alf’s seared salmon.