In 1612 a lake north of Amsterdam disappeared. Wealthy merchants, flush with money from the Dutch trading boom, financed the draining of the Beemster, and the engineer Jan Adriaenszoon Leeghwater used dozens of windmills to pump the water out into a ring canal. What remained was a polder several metres below sea level, laid out in a perfectly regular grid of roads, canals and fields based on Renaissance ideas of order and proportion. The Beemster was inscribed by UNESCO in 1999 as a masterpiece of creative planning, and from above it looks like a ruled sheet of paper.
On the ground the landscape is flat, green and calm, divided by straight roads lined with trees and long ditches full of reeds. Grand farmhouses with pyramid roofs, many dating back to the seventeenth century, sit in their own little islands of trees. The Stelling van Amsterdam, a ring of forts built around the capital in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, also runs through the polder, and its forts can be seen at intervals. Beemster cheese, made from the milk of cows grazing on the rich clay soil, is famous throughout the Netherlands.
Riding here is about geometry rather than corners. The roads are straight, flat and narrow, often on dykes above the fields, and you share them with cyclists, tractors and the occasional herd of cows being moved. Wind is the main challenge, and it can be very strong across the open landscape. Speed limits are low, and cyclists have priority in many places. Early morning, when mist lies over the fields, or late evening, with the sun setting over the flat land, is the best time to ride.
Purmerend, six kilometres south, has petrol and every other practical thing, and Middenbeemster, the village at the centre of the polder, has cafés, a museum and a church. Try the local cheese, of course, and perhaps a glass of beer from a local brewery. Amsterdam is close enough for an evening, and De Rijp, a pretty village nearby, is a lovely place for a coffee.