The Romans left their ships behind. In the 1990s, when the new suburb of Leidsche Rijn was being built on farmland west of Utrecht, excavators found the remains of several Roman river barges buried in the clay at De Meern, flat-bottomed craft that carried supplies along the Rhine to the soldiers on the frontier. Close to them, archaeologists uncovered a fort, called Hoge Woerd, which is now one of the best-known pieces of the Lower Germanic Limes. Part of its walls and gate towers has been reconstructed on the original foundations, and it stands incongruously among the houses of a modern housing estate, with a museum and a field where people can see the layout.
That mix of old and new is what makes the place so Dutch. Leidsche Rijn is one of the largest new housing districts in the Netherlands, built from the 1990s onwards with its own canals, parks and cycle routes, and the fort has simply been absorbed into it, as a landmark among the new streets. Walking the walls, you can imagine auxiliary soldiers, recruited in far-off provinces, standing guard over a river that is now a sleepy waterway.
The ride into Utrecht from this side is simple. Roads are smooth, well signed and strictly regulated, and the district is a grid of residential streets and bike lanes, so the speed is low. The Vleuten and De Meern area, now merged into Utrecht, has an old village core with a church tower and small pubs. The motorway ring around Utrecht is busy and fast, with cameras, and in rush hours, it clogs completely, so time your arrival to avoid the peaks. A weekend morning is the quietest.
Veldhuizen and Oog in Al are neighbourhoods with several thousand people each, and fuel and food are no trouble anywhere in the city. The Old Rhine that once carried the Roman barges now runs in a modest channel, and the water meadows to the west, with their cows and reflections, still feel like open country. In spring and early summer, the air smells of cut grass, and in autumn the mists are thick over the fields. Nearby, the Haarzuilens castle and its park, a short ride west, make a quiet detour on a sunny day.