Fighting words on the banks of the Old Maas

It would be easy to think the Netherlands is one big motorway. As we travel south from Amsterdam on Easter weekend, it seems everyone is on the move. The motorway network is superb: every major centre is linked by well-signposted highways on which people mostly drive with care and courtesy.

For Carl Clancy and Walter Storey in 1912, it was all so different. Dutch drivers of carts "never condescended to hear our horns and rarely yielded an inch of the road", he wrote in one of his dispatches to the Bicycling World and Motorcycle Review , chronicling their pioneering around-the-world motorbike adventure.

The slimy, mud-covered Dutch roads were paved in bricks then. They must have rattled the hell out of their Henderson motorcycles, which had virtually no suspension.

For us – Geoff Hill, Gary Walker and myself – our first paved roads after Amsterdam were in Haarlem, which Clancy visited and where he was nabbed by a “jolly cop” for driving without a light. We too were nabbed by a brace of jolly-ish cops as we navigated our way slowly down a pedestrian street just off Haarlem’s bustling Easter Saturday market and, like Clancy, our status as foreigners also earned us fools’ pardons.

South past the Hague and towards Dordrecht, through the cobweb-like network of rivers that constitute the Rhine delta.

At one stage, three substantial highways merge to form a 12-lane motorway that flies over the Maas. A greater contrast to the roads of 100 years ago will not be found.We are heading for Het Witte Paard, a restaurant and hotel on the north bank of the Old Maas opposite Dordrecht, where Clancy and Storey spent a night.

Hill’s sat-nav decides we wish to go to a suburb of Etten- Leur, about 25km farther on, to a newish hotel owned, apparently, by Het Witte Paard (The White Horse). An hour later, we reach the site of Het Witte Paard after Google finds me an apartment for sale in a block of the same name. So we look for help in a quaint bookshop in Zwijndrecht.

Henk te Veldhuis stares at me blankly as I gabble on about Clancy, giving a detailed and only slightly too long introduction. “Do you know where the Het Witte Paard is?" I finish.

"Yes," he says, "that is it there." He is pointing at an anonymous, 10-storey apartment block opposite. "Oh," I say, "and what happened?"

Past in pictures
Henk brings out a volume of local history, Verleden in Beeld (The Past in Pictures ) of which he happens to be a co-author.

There are several photos of the well-known former hotel, café and restaurant as it was in Clancy’s time.It looks to have been a fine place. A solid, Edwardian mansion by a cobblestone street and with splendid river views. It was the only hotel in Zwijndrecht, the tram used to stop by it and it was also by a small ferry crossing.

Clancy and Storey stayed the night but felt ripped off next morning when hit for 40 cents apiece for bread and chocolate, and 30 cents for two small chops. He declined to pay, cut the bill in half with a flourish of his pencil and headed for the door. But a furious waiter got there first, locked it and blocked the exit.

Clancy demanded the presence of the owner, at which the waiter relented. One suspects Het Witte Paard used to be the place for well-to-do locals and passersby. It prospered up to the second World War.

After the war, it ceased trading and became home to a printing operation that lasted to the 1980s. Then it fell into disrepair, was knocked down and the spectacularly unremarkable block of apartments built.

Henk has grown enthusiastic telling us the story and showing us the photos. We take his picture; he’s fascinated at what we are doing. He speaks longingly about Cork and Galway which he visited decades ago.

He gives us a huge smile and a big wave through his bookshop window as we speed off. He looked like he was envious of our freedom.