Every July, a river of walkers pours through Nijmegen. The Four Days Marches, which have been held since 1909, attract tens of thousands of people who walk thirty, forty or fifty kilometres a day for four days, and the whole city welcomes them with flowers and music. The marchers cross the great bridge over the Waal, which is one of the widest rivers in the country, and the Kops Plateau, a rise on the edge of the old town, is part of the same landscape. In the second half of the twentieth century it was a place of sandpits and playing fields, but an older story lies beneath it.
The plateau is where the Romans first set up camp in Nijmegen. Before the permanent legionary fortress at the Hunerberg, an earlier military camp stood here, around the end of the first century BC, when Roman armies pushed to the Rhine, and archaeologists have found the ditches and post holes of the first soldiers. Nijmegen is often described as the oldest city in the Netherlands, and the claim rests on this long Roman presence. The ride goes from here to Kalkar and the Kalkarberg in Germany, along the old frontier of the Rhine, past fields, orchards and quiet villages.
The riding here is flat and gentle, and the pleasure comes from the river. The Waal flows wide and brown, with barges passing, and the dike roads are lined with willows and farmhouses, with views over the water meadows. The new bridge, called De Oversteek, a white arch, crosses the river west of the city, and the old bridge, the site of a famous crossing by American paratroopers in September 1944, lies at the centre. Winds can be strong and bring rain from the west, and in winter the floodplains are often under water.
Nijmegen is a large student town, so there are fuel stations, bike shops and cafes on every corner, and bars and music fill the old centre in the evenings. Traffic in the city is thick at rush hour, with buses, bicycles and cars, and speed cameras are common, so the Dutch limits are best respected. The nearby suburb of Hengstdal is quiet, and the woods to the south and east offer a little more adventure on the small lanes that climb the ridge.