When it’s spring again...

Our writer tiptoed through the tulips (there’s 7m in the Keukenhof Gardens) on an unforgettable Dutch river cruise

IT’S tulip time and already I’m looking forward to the autumn... why, you may ask? Because that’s when all the bulbs I’ve ordered in Holland will arrive for planting.

I’m not under any illusions that my little beds will ever rival those in the Keukenhof Gardens, but these bulbs will remind me of my visit to this memorable place. Open for only two months every year, seven million blooms, in a staggering 800 varieties, vie for attention in every conceivable palette and configuration. Then they are all taken up so the gardens can be planned and planted for the following year. The tulip is often described as the ‘flower that drove men mad.’ In 1637 bulbs were changing hands at Celtic Tiger sort of prices and were quoted on the stock exchange.

During ‘Tulipmania’ one single bulb of the variety Admiral van Enkhuijsen, sold for the equivalent of 15 years wages for a bricklayer. The aristocracy planted

them in front of mirrors to give the illusion of having many more blooms than bulbs in their gardens. Everyone wanted in.

Then the crash came and fortunes and livelihoods evaporated. Fortunately the tulips didn’t.

Many go to Holland solely for the visual feast at Keukenhof Gardens, and it certainly was an unforgettable experience, but I had other plans.

I was on a luxury river cruise, aboard the Uniworld River Duchesse and it took me from Amsterdam to the north, back down through the country into Belgium, to Bruges and Antwerp.

Between being wined, dined and entertained like nobility, along the way we docked in atmospheric fishing villages like Hoorn and Veere, enjoyed the modern architecture of Rotterdam, and visited the open-air museum at Enkhuijsen or Haringstrad – Herring Town.

This attraction is a walk through history many of the authentic and furnished houses and buildings were rescued, transported and re-assembled to recreate a fishing village like those that were lost along the Zuiderzee almost a century ago, when the Barrier Dam was erected.

They have a smoke house (for the fish!), lime kilns, a cheese warehouse, a school, a church and a pharmacy. We visited several of the houses and when we expressed amazement at how short the beds were we were informed that people always slept sitting up in those days.

We all know the story of the Little Dutch boy who saved his village from inundation by keeping his finger in the hole in the dyke? Not so. Dutch children don’t learn that fable. Instead, at such places as the Delta museum, they are taught how the dams and dykes really work.

They also learn how to take pride in the fact that they are world leaders in keeping the oceans at bay. With 50% of the Netherlands lying below sea level – anywhere from one to seven metres – they aren’t leaving anything to chance.

Despite the sophisticated pumping and drainage schemes, the iconic windmill still plays its part.

At Kinderdijk, or Children’s Dyke, which is now a UNESCO World Heritage site, both sides of the canal are guarded by 19 fully functional thatched and brick windmills, powered in the traditional way and lived in by their keepers.

We went inside and climbed to the top, and were given a quick course in the language of the sails and how their position was used as a signalling system to alert of impending danger.

We spent the day under glorious blue skies with cotton wool clouds, the sort that the Old Dutch Masters loved to paint.

In Amsterdam, between avoiding the cyclists, we were to become better acquainted with many of them at the Rijksmuseum.

There, thanks to an expert guide we were reintroduced to the nuances Fran Hals, van Gogh, van Leyden, Vermeer and Rembrandt, as she pointed out a glint in the eye, a coquettish inclination of the head, or the hidden face of the artist’s wife in a crowd scene.

I had always wanted to see the dolls’ houses and there they were, in a room of their own, resplendent and opulent, replicas of wealthy merchant homes in the late 1600s.