After breakfast I walked around Gouda while it was quiet and dry. It’s stereotypically Dutch – cobbles, canals, gables that look good reflected in those same canals. The town hall, the cheese weighing house, the grote kerk, the fish market arcade beside the canal (like Delft) that I remembered from a previous visit – I walked round them all.

I caught the train to Rotterdam (a headwind and memories of the dull ride decided me) and started cycling from there, and now I’m in Maassluis again.

Another day of two halves: a morning ride through sandy woodlands that encouraged me to linger, followed by an afternoon of hard pedalling into a drizzly headwind as I misnavigated and realised that I still had miles to go. The wind is getting stronger and colder too; I turned right towards Oudewater and suddenly moved from a gruelling 7mph to an exhilarating – oooh! – 10mph or so as the wind caught my back.

At Zeist there was a big castle that I skirted round. Lots of forts south of Utrecht, and Nieuwegein and Ijsselstein had pretty old centres when I finally got through all their outskirts. I only really have time to stop for coffee and cake, but I did make exceptions for an undulating hedge dusted with fallen leaves and the biggest gathering of coots I’ve ever seen in one place. I had them down as unsociable birds: how wrong I was.

And so to Gouda. The light was fading as I arrived so I had no time to explore. In the evening I wandered out in search of something to eat; turning a corner, I suddenly found myself in the main square.