Middelburg is the sort of Dutch town that makes you slow down on purpose. It is the capital of Zeeland, set on the old island of Walcheren, and the canals, brick houses and a huge Gothic town hall give it a settled, prosperous look. Around forty-six thousand people live here, enough to guarantee fuel, coffee and a proper lunch, but small enough that you can see the centre on foot in an afternoon.
The history is heavier than the pretty brickwork suggests. In May 1940, during the German invasion, bombing and fire destroyed a large part of the historic centre, and the town was rebuilt in the years that followed, with the abbey complex and the town hall restored. The abbey, with its tall Lange Jan tower, is the heart of the place and was a major religious centre in the Middle Ages. Zeeland was also deeply tied to the Dutch East India Company, which had one of its chambers here, so a lot of old wealth and trade runs under the streets.
Then there is the water, which is the reason a rider comes to Zeeland at all. In 1953 a storm surge broke through the dikes, flooded much of the province and killed well over a thousand people across the Netherlands. The answer was the Delta Works, a vast system of dams, dikes and storm surge barriers, and a few kilometres from town you can ride across the Oosterschelde barrier, a long gate-lined structure which is among the great pieces of engineering in Europe. Seals haul out on the sandbanks nearby, and the sky is enormous.
The riding is flat and gentle, with long causeways, dike-top roads and quiet lanes among polder fields, and the main enemy is the wind, which comes in from the North Sea and can push a bike sideways on exposed bridges. Traffic is calm outside the summer weekends, when cyclists and holiday makers fill the roads. Keep to speed limits, which are strictly enforced with cameras.
Finish here with something Dutch and straightforward. Mussels from Yerseke are famous in the region, and a plate of fish by the harbour makes a fair end to a day on the dikes.