The tasting menu thing stretched to breakfast, which was definitely taking things too far! I had a full day’s cycling ahead and I wanted food, not dainty morsels displayed on stones and marble chips. Particularly not when the tastes include curry soup and goat’s cheese. Not flavours you want haunting you as you pedal along.

Unsurprisingly, I stopped at the first bakery I saw.

Zutphen is on the River Ijssel, which was very close to my hotel. Another pleasant – if damp and grey – ride through the sandy woodland and heath of the Veluwe.

It’s inevitable that I cross or repeat former rides as I cycle between Germany and Dutch ports. Today it was Building A of the transmitting station at Radio Kootwijk (1920) that got the second visit. This time I got the reflection in the reflecting pool. As I pedalled off I wondered if there was anything similar in Britain – Alexandra Palace, some of those place names on old radio dials like Droitwich? But actually I really don’t know the difference between a transmitting station, a radio mast and radio studios.

Once again, I realised I’d left myself with a lot to do in the afternoon. I arrived at my hotel at 4.30 p.m. with my lights on. It’s on the edge of Amersfoort, run by the International School for Philosophy. Each room is named after a philosopher: mine is Jean-Paul Sartre. As I walked along the corridor, past Wittgenstein, John Stuart Mill, Plato, Aristotle and Descartes, I found myself humming Bruces’ Philosophers Song from Monty Python.