Look at Groningen from the Martinitoren and you understand the whole north of the Netherlands in one view: the city is a dense knot of brick and canal, and beyond it the land goes flat and open all the way to the Wadden Sea. The tower, a bit over ninety metres of church spire, has been the landmark for centuries. The Grote Markt below it is a big square that fills with students, since the university dates from 1614 and a large part of the population is under thirty. That makes the evenings livelier than you would expect from the quiet reputation of the province.
The country around is a landscape that was built by hand. Farmers heaped up mounds called wierden, the local word for the terpen of Friesland, so that their houses stayed dry when the sea came in, and nearly every village sits on one with a small Romanesque church of brick on top. Many of those churches are locked, but a key is often held in the village and the interiors, with painted vaults and old organs, are worth the question. Out in the east the Dollard bay marks where a storm flood tore a hole in the coast in the Middle Ages. Beneath the fields lies the big gas deposit that made the region rich and later made it shake, and in some villages the cracked walls tell that story better than any museum.
Riding here is about distance, light and wind. The roads run dead straight along drainage channels, and with the sky so wide the weather is visible for an hour before it reaches you. A westerly can make a fast stretch hard work and a head-on crosswind a real nuisance, so keep the shoulders loose. Dike roads are narrow and the speed limits are low, and cameras are common. In the evening the light goes long and gold across the fields, and cattle stand knee-deep in a low mist on cool nights.
The city has all the fuel you could need, and the ring road has stations on every side. After a day in the open it is a pleasure to come back to somewhere with warm brown cafes along the canals, where a plate of something local and a dark beer are easy to find.