Dutch Roadtrip: Pottery & seas (4/6)

Back to Delft, then, and in the morning we set out to explore the old city. The good thing about everything starting so late is that you can pretend you rose at the crack of dawn, especially if, like us, you arrive out of season. The city goes back to the 11th century, but much of what you see is more recent. On 12 October 1654, Cornelius Soetens, keeper of the magazine, checked the stores and caused an explosion. 30 tons of gunpowder exploded, destroying a third of the city, killing many people — hundreds, according to historians — and wounding even more. The Old Church, on which construction began in the 13th century, survived, except for the windows, but the reason the tower is so crooked is simply that the ground here is too soft. Buried here is one of Delft’s most famous residents: Jan Vermeer, best known for his portrait of an unnamed girl with an earring. The tower is known as “Old John”, or in Dutch, “De Oude Jan”. Or, if you prefer it in French, “Le vieux Jean”. This would seem to be Delft’s French quarter, which extends around the corner to the Café du Centre. The New Church isn’t much newer, but took 100 years to build. In 1584, William of Orange was murdered in Delft, and with the family burial ground in enemy hands, he was buried here. It is now the traditional burial place for the Royal Family. The New Church is at one end of the market place, and the day we were there just happened to be market day. I must say that Dutch markets remind me of the markets we used to have in Britain in the 80s: yes, you can get local produce here; but also a lot of cheap fashion items. At the other end is the City Hall, originally built in the 15th century. It had to be rebuilt in the 1600s after a fire — Delft has had its fair share of those, too. Behind the City Hall is the old weigh house. Delft received its city charter in 1246, and with it the right to keep its own set of scales. Mediaeval cities like this are picturesque, unless you have to deliver goods into the centre, or find you can’t make a video without some modern intrusion or other, but Delft is attractive enough to be the 2nd most popular tourist destination after Amsterdam. At its height, Delft was the third largest city in the Netherlands, and became the cultural and scientific centre of the country. It’s most famous for its porcelein. In the 17th century, Dutch manufacturers tried to emulate the designs on Chinese porcelein from Nanjing: Delft artists were the most successful. It didn’t last long. From 1672, the country’s economy went downhill, Delft lost business to Rotterdam and The Hague, and Delftware couldn’t compete with mass-produced products from England. Today, modern Delft is doing a bit better, but its population has stopped growing at a little under 100,000, having tripled during the 20th century. But it was time for us to take to the open road, and head south. A small navigational error took us unwittingly towards Rotterdam, a city we weren’t planning to visit, but we got a glimpse of the Port of Rotterdam, one of the biggest and busiest ports in the world. In fact, between 1962 and 1986, it was the biggest. It stretches from the North Sea to Rotterdam itself, a distance of 40km (25 miles) and covering 105km² (40 sq. miles). We got back on the right track and headed for the seriously watery part of the country. One thing you have to get used to is the feeling of driving across causeways. At least the weather was OK: the North Sea can get pretty stormy. Even so, all that salt in the air is not good for your car. We made our way to Ouddorp, more or less randomly, where we paid a visit to the beach. One of the first things you notice about the coast in this country is that you can’t always see the sea, because there’s usually a massive *** in the way. And by “massive”, I mean “massive”. Behind it, you’re confronted with some useful instructions on how to use the beach, and if you get past that, you can go ahead and try to find an activity that isn’t forbidden. Throwing Frisbees is one, a skill which requires practice. The Netherlands’ relationship to the sea is ambivalent, to say the least. Humans have for centuries reclaimed land from the sea, and the sea has attempted to reclaim it back in a series of devastating floods, often killing thousands of people. The most recent was in 1953, which claimed over 1800 lives in the Netherlands, as well as hundreds more in Belgium and England. The beach may be almost empty in mid-October, but there’s no escaping the fact that you’re in one of the world’s most densely populated areas. Time once again to get back to the car and make our way out of South Holland, and on to Zeeland, to find a place to stay before everything closed. Which, in the Netherlands, is 6 o’clock.