Flat Is a Lie

• Amsterdam
• 10:20
• 17°C, bright, light crosswind

Picked up Beast, adjusted the saddle four times, and joined the river of bikes heading everywhere at once. This is the view over the first bridge — glasses doing the work, both hands where they should be. Amsterdam cyclists forgave my line choice roughly never, and rang their bells to say so.

• Zaanse Schans
• 12:35
• 18°C, sun and fat clouds

First proper stage north, and the windmills arrived exactly on schedule, standing along the water like they had been told to expect me. I rode past, doubled back, rode past again for the glasses clip, then finally stopped and got the real camera out. Three passes for one photo. The wind charged me for all three.

• Zuid-Kennemerland
• 14:50
• 15°C, wind force five, they said

Through the Kennemerland dunes the path swings between sand hills and suddenly you can smell the North Sea before you see it. A lighthouse on the horizon, marram grass flat against the ground, and my speed down to 14 km/h without a single metre of climbing. The Dutch call it wind force five. I call it a hill that follows you.

• Kinderdijk
• 08:00
• 13°C, clear, still — a miracle

I timed the whole route so this stage would land on a clear morning, and for once the forecast honoured the deal. Nineteen mills along the dike, water on both sides, one other cyclist who nodded like we had both won something. This is what the postcard promises and the postcard, for once, undersells it.