East of Amsterdam, where the IJ widens into the IJmeer and the city gives way to water and sky, the old dike village of Durgerdam sits on a strip of land between the sea wall and the polders. Its wooden houses, painted in strong colours and leaning on each other along the dike, look out over a lake that was once the Zuiderzee, open to the North Sea until the Afsluitdijk closed it in 1932. The works along the IJ here belong to the Defence Line of Amsterdam, now part of the Dutch Water Defence Lines World Heritage Site.
The Defence Line was a ring of forts, dikes, sluices and inundation fields built around the city in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In time of war, the Dutch planned to flood the land around Amsterdam to a depth that would stop soldiers but was too shallow for boats, while forts covered the dikes and roads that crossed the water. It was obsolete almost as soon as it was finished, thanks to aircraft, but it remains a remarkable example of using water as a weapon. The fortified island of Pampus, out in the IJmeer, is part of it and can be visited by boat.
Riding here is a very Dutch experience. The dike roads are narrow, sometimes single track, and cyclists are everywhere, often in large groups and with priority on many stretches. Speed limits are low and enforced. The wind is the main character: it blows hard across the IJmeer, and on an open dike you feel every gust. In return you get wide views, big skies and the special light of the Dutch waterlands that painters loved.
Nearby Muiden has the Muiderslot, a medieval moated castle where the poet P. C. Hooft gathered a circle of writers and artists in the seventeenth century. Further north, the Waterland area of meadows, ditches and wooden villages such as Ransdorp and Holysloot offers more quiet dike riding.
Diemen and the eastern districts of Amsterdam have fuel and shops. Watch out for Amsterdam's environmental rules, scooter and moped lanes and the constant flow of bikes. Durgerdam itself has a few places to eat with a view of the water, and on a sunny day it is hard to believe the city centre is only a few kilometres away.