A river that has lost its job is a curious thing to ride beside. The Kromme Rijn, the crooked Rhine, was once the main channel of the Rhine through the middle Netherlands, and the Romans used it as their northern frontier. They built forts along it at intervals, among them one at Vechten, just east of Utrecht, and another at Bunnik, and the river served as a road for supply boats. In the Middle Ages the Rhine silted up and shifted, and what is left is a gentle, winding stream with willows and farm bridges, in a landscape of meadows and moated estates.
The culvert and bridge here belong to the later story of the Dutch Water Defence Lines. As far as I can tell, this is one of the structures used to manage the water in the New Dutch Waterline, where the idea was to flood a belt of land in wartime, and sluices and culverts allowed the engineers to let water in or hold it back. Modest in appearance, it is an example of how much of the line's strength lay in plumbing.
The area lies just east of Utrecht, near the suburb of Lunetten, whose name comes from a ring of small forts called lunettes. The surrounding countryside is a favourite with Dutch cyclists, and the lanes through the polders and past old farmsteads make a gentle ride. Roads are narrow and often shared with riders on bicycles, so keep speeds low. Fuel is no problem in Utrecht, and there are petrol stations along the roads to Houten and Bunnik.
Fort Vechten, nearby, houses a museum about the Waterline, with exhibitions on the engineering and the military ideas. In a flat country, a modest earth bank was sometimes the best defence, and the surprise is how well the system worked in theory and how rarely it was tested in practice.
Spring brings blossom in the orchards around Bunnik, and autumn brings mist on the meadows. The best time to ride is early morning, when the air is cool and the light is low and gold. Winters are damp, and in cold years you might see skaters on a flooded field.