QUEEN’S DAY – enter the king…

So relaxed and natural. Not protocol fascists.

Our Australian friend John met the new Dutch king on his trip down under a few years ago. Like me, John has a Dutch wife and speaks fluent bad Nederlands.

He and his wife were invited to an official reception for Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and the immensely popular Princess Maxima and checked on the correct way to address the royals. ‘Uw koninklijke hoogheid’ (‘your royal highness’) is a mouthful, even for Dutch people.

John practised the phrase faithfully on the way to the event. ‘Uw konning likker hoe geid…you konick linker hog height…’ It wasn’t going well.

HORIZONTAL RIDING – Texel Island

Riding with the wind for a change.

This island is 20 kilometres long, 10 kilometres wide and has more than 135 kilometres of cycle paths. It’s not hard to guess which country we’re talking about.

Texel, the most southerly of the Dutch Wadden Islands, is flat. Mostly.

TROUBLE AT BRIDGE – Amsterdam

Mind the gap! A steady hand on the tiller was needed to steer this French cruise boat down the Schinkel.

A constant source of free entertainment is available from our Amsterdam balcony as we watch the bridge on the Overtoomsesluis open, stopping road traffic to let the boats pass.

The Schinkel, the canal below us, is the busiest working canal in Amsterdam. On weekdays there is a regular parade of barges, ferrying sand dredged from the harbour to places inland where it is more useful for building and land reclamation.

It’s only a few metres deep, and generally calm and flat, but oh, there are some impressive feats of helmsmanship on show. And there’s always something going on down there.

HELP! My blog is under attack!

It looked innocent enough – a comment, albeit one with grammatical mistakes, telling me in glowing terms how great my site was and asking for my advice about how to set up a blog.

It turned out to be poison.

DUTCH ID – the best electric bike?

A sight I won’t see so often in future…Mevrouw T cycling behind me.

Is this an exciting step forward into the future of our cycling or an admission of defeat? We’ve bought an electric-assist bike.

Was this a good decision?

AMSTEL LOOP RIDE – 44 km of pleasure mingled with pain

The drink station at Ouderkerk aan de Amstel.

The Amstel Gold race, perhaps the Netherlands’ most important cycling event, is on TV today. My modest ride along the Amstel River wouldn’t qualify as ‘gold’; it was more ‘aluminium alloy’ class.

But it wasn’t raining, the sun was making an effort to break through, and I needed to get some serious kilometres in before the Classico Boretti cycling event exactly three weeks from now.

Either my Brooks saddle or my rear end has changed shape since they were last in contact seven months ago. They’re no longer a perfect match. My loop was hard work, and that gave me an excuse to stop and admire the scenery along the way.