The sky is the limit in this flat country

evening sky over 'noord holland'

It was a somewhat grey day, and I had just reached Amsterdam’s city limits to the North, cycling quietly under a big sky, stretching to the horizon. You don’t even have to go out of the city of Amsterdam to discover that this country has magnificently big skies. Go up to a sky bar, order a favourite drink and enjoy the views. Take the psychedelic elevator of the Amsterdam Tower and venture on to its terrace for a yet unparalleled vista of the city and its environs. There are many other high vantage points in the city of course and you will find them easily by using your favourite search engine. 

Out of town, you only need the slightest elevation. A bridge like the one pictured above will likely do. 

Because, you see, there are no hills here in the province of Noord Holland. We live in a river delta. Only 1100 years ago Amsterdam was a swamp, where whatever ‘islands’  that existed could break up and have their geography redrawn after a North Sea storm had battered the coast or the waters of the mighty River Rhine had inundated it. Constant vigilance and significant financial resources are needed to keep dykes in order and the country from being flooded. And because of this flatness, as soon as you have gained some height and find yourself on top of a building, on a dyke or, as in this case, a bridge in the countryside, you can appreciate it all around you. 

The sky. 

It stretches out uninterrupted for miles, like a dome or a cupola, marking the boundary, forming the limits to the lands that extend below.

Never the same when you look at it twice. The wind makes clouds appear as if in a constant game of chase and pursuit. Many Dutch painters have sought to capture these skies in their works, producing splendid paintings of sea and landscapes. Jacob van Ruisdael (1629-1682), a famous painter of the Dutch Golden Age excelled at these. “Other artists of the time emphasised Holland’s big skies, but it was Ruisdael, whose cloudscapes show a world reduced to its essentials, who produced definitive images of his country’s famous flatness.”, said art historian and Dutch art scholar Seymour Slive (1920-2014) and he continued: “With cloud-filled skies taking up most of the pictures, Ruisdael seems to be asking, like a twentieth-century abstractionist, how little of the dark earth he needs at the bottom of his painting to balance above it a vast sky”.

I shall be off to admire Ruisdael’s paintings at the Rijksmuseum (www.Rijksmuseum.nl), such as his ‘View of Haarlem from the Northwest with Bleaching Fields in the Foreground’ and ‘The Windmill at Wijk bij Duurstede’. Moreover, if you happen to be out cycling on a quiet day, with no wind to speak of, the sky will extend into the thousand small and big channels that criss cross Noord Holland, reflecting itself onto the water. Choose a slightly grey day in the twilight zone to explore and you can almost be sure to give Silence and Solitude a high score as well.

Photo credit: I took this photo on an early winter evening in North Holland, while cycling. For a useful introduction into cycling in The Netherlands see www.cycletourer.co.uk and for specific routes and the ‘cycling by numbers’ network visit www.hollandcyclingroutes.com

Source of Seymor Slive quote: A Quintet of Cloudscapes by Jacob van Ruisdael, article by Janis Blackschleger, www.ecology.com/2014/04/09/quintet-cloudscapes-jacob-isaackzs/