Twenty minutes from Central Station, Amsterdam ends and the countryside begins. The trams, the crowds and the canal boats fall away, and what opens up instead is sky.

You roll your bike onto the free ferry across the IJ, and ten minutes later you are heading north along the Noordhollandsch Kanaal with Krijtmolen d'Admiraal turning on the bank beside you. Then the road climbs onto a dike and the polder opens out: farmland below sea level, water on both sides, sheep in the fields, almost nothing coming the other way.

The route runs through Zunderdorp and Ransdorp, two water land villages that were already old when Amsterdam was making its name. Timber houses leaning into one another, a squat church tower you can see for kilometres, working farmyards rather than souvenir shops.

Twenty kilometres, three hours, flat the entire way. Classic Dutch bike or e-bike, groups capped at 15, a local guide, helmets for every rider, and a stroopwafel on the ride back.