Jon Murray and his wife Maria take a ferry to Holland, where cyclists are king of the road, on a multisensory journey

I had been expecting a visual feast of colour — and it certainly was — but what I hadn’t been prepared for was the wonderful smell. Yet cycling through the bulbfields of Holland brings an assault on the senses.

Perhaps the glorious aromas should not have been such a surprise when you consider that you are cycling between fields containing hundreds of thousands of hyacinths. Or narcissi. Or tulips.

Rows and rows of white, pink, purple, blue and yellow, and so many shades of red.

It was my wife, Maria, who had said she would like for her birthday to cycle through the bulbfields, which can be easily combined on a short break with a visit to Amsterdam.

Last year we began planning it, but time ran out, the harsh winter shortening the season that the tulips were in bloom.

So we revisited the idea a few weeks ago, and it was not difficult to book everything at late notice.

Flying to Schiphol would have been an option, but we thought that taking Stena Line’s overnight ferry from Harwich to Hook of Holland would give us more time there.

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  • Maria and Jon amid the flowers

And because everyone in Holland cycles, hiring bicycles is incredibly easy, and cheap — from our hotel they were just 8.50 euros (£7) per day.

It wasn’t so long ago that crossing the Channel or North Sea by ferry was hardly the most pleasurable experience, certainly on the Dover-Calais route at least. I remember sometimes having a long wait to board, followed by a scramble for a decent seat, and the cafeterias resembling those at motorway service stations.

Things have come on a long way since then. Scandinavian company Stena’s two ships on the Harwich-Hook route, the Stena Hollandica and the Stena Britannica, are more like luxury cruise liners. At 240m long, they are the two largest superferries in the world, and have cinemas, comfortable cabins and elegant restaurants.

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  • Stena Bitannica

Blessed with a calm crossing, we arrived at our destination refreshed. Mind you, even had high pressure not prevailed, it wouldn’t have mattered to these huge ships. They carried on as normal in last December’s Hurricane Force 12, with just an occasional rattling wine glass, our waiter informed us.

The first thing that happened on arriving at Hoek van Holland, as the Dutch call it, at 7.45am was that, along with every other driver disembarking the ship, I was breathalysed! This wasn’t a problem, having had just a glass of wine with dinner the night before, but it seemed a strange way of welcoming people to a country.

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  • Van der Valk Hotel Leiden

We had decided to stay for two nights in Leiden — Oxford’s twin town — a delightful small university city, brimming with canals, character and students, and a good base from which to visit the bulbfields.

The short drive north from Hoek to Leiden takes only half an hour — the first village you pass through is the wonderfully named Monster (and yes, I did have my picture taken next to the sign, see below).

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  • Arriving at the first village

 

After checking in at the Van der Valk Hotel Leiden, we caught the train to Amsterdam to enjoy a full day in the capital. It’s a city we have visited and stayed in before, but that was long before the iconic Rijksmuseum’s near-10 year renovation.

This magnificent museum contains more than 8,000 pieces of art and history, yet there is only so much you can see in an afternoon, and we concentrated on the galleries displaying work by the Dutch Masters, following in Barack Obama’s footsteps of a week earlier by standing in awe in front of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch.

An hour-long canal cruise, which is included when one buys an Amsterdam city card, proved a fine way to gain a better orientation of the centre of this special city.

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  • Some blooms at Keukenhof

But it was the bulbfields we had really come to see, and next day, we headed to Keukenhof.

Dubbed “the most beautiful spring garden in the world”, Keukenhof is a park and showcase for the Dutch floricultural sector. From the end of March until the middle of May it shows what they can offer, with some seven million spring-flowering bulbs on display.

The park first opened its gates to the public in 1950 and every year it attracts 800,000-850,000 visitors from more than 100 countries in its brief eight-week season.

Within the park the Historical garden tells the development of 500 years of tulip growing in the Netherlands.

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  • Tulips have a meaning

When you give flowers, in some cases you also send a message. Red tulips mean turbulent love, yellow tulips mean rejection and black tulips: ‘I love you so much I would give everything up for you’.

If you gave a tulip in the 16th century, then you would be giving riches. In that time the flower was extremely popular and a speculative trade in tulip bulbs quickly developed. In those days you could buy a whole canal house in Amsterdam for the price of one tulip bulb.

The displays of tulips and other bulbs at Keukenhof are stunning, and to achieve the longest possible flowering season in the space available, its gardeners use “lasagne” planting, with the various types of bulbs planted in several layers.

In order to just head off on our own, though, to cycle through field after field of tulips and other bulbs, we hired bicycles from Rent-a-bike van Dam at Keukenhof, which provided us with different route plans ranging from five to 14 miles.

The bikes are so good, the cycle paths so ubiquitous, and the land so flat that a 10-mile route takes no time. Except it did because Maria kept wanting to take pictures.

The next day we hired bicycles from our hotel. Van der Valk Hotel Leiden is a comfortable four-star hotel with a fine restaurant, and although it is a little way out of the centre — it stands next to a folding bridge on the banks of the Oude Rijn (Old Rhine), a branch of the Rhine delta — it was attractive because it has affordable two-night deals.

I must admit, cycling in Holland did take some getting used to. For one thing, the notion that the cyclist is king. If your cycle path passes through a roundabout, for instance, all the traffic stops to give way to those on bikes. It is hard to imagine that in central London, or in Oxford for that matter.

And it’s hard to imagine anywhere else that we will visit with such an array of colours as the bulbfields of Holland.

TRAVEL FACTS

Jon and Maria were guests of Stena Line for the return ferry to Holland and paid for their own stay at Van der Valk Hotel Leiden. Stena’s prices for Harwich-Hook of Holland start from £59 single for a car and driver, with cabins starting from £15 (day crossing), or £30 (overnight crossing). Van der Valk Hotel Leiden has 3-night packages, in a luxury room, with breakfast, from 99 euros per person. Entry to Keukenhof costs 15 euros.

Contacts:

Hotel Leiden — www.hotelleiden.nl/en/

Stena Line — www.stenaline.co.uk/Holland

Keukenhof: www.keukenhof.nl/en/

Also worth visiting: www.holland.com