Last week I walked through Hell, and it was cold. Later in the day however, as the sun rose and the wind fell, it became comfortably warm. The farmhouse we approached to ask for directions appeared at first sight to be an orphanage, there were so many children working on the maize harvest in the yard. But the woman who came out to advise us was obviously the mother of them all.
Procreation is one of the few pleasures permitted there - indeed not only permitted, but encouraged as a communal duty.
She wore a long, flowing skirt like all the women of Hell, even though they were doing heavy farm work in the fields, and all her many daughters were similarly dressed. Trousers are for men only in this region.
Dutch Bible Belt
Hell - or, to give it its Dutch spelling, Hel - is in the heart of the Dutch Reformed Bible belt of central Holland. This is where, on Saturday nights, they lock up not only their daughters but even their automatic cash dispensers, so that no undue levity can sully the Sabbath.
There is no birth control in this region; in Holland birth control is for loose-living Catholics. People honour their God by presenting Him with as many children as possible.
We had arrived in Hel by following the Linge Pad, one of Holland's way-marked, long-distance walking paths - a sort of Wicklow Way after landscaping by a million bulldozers.
The Linge is one of the world's great survivors. It is a stream or - depending on your perspective and the size of your hiking boots - a river, or a mean ditch, which meanders through the delta of central Holland between two branches of the Rhine, the Neder Rijn and the Waal.
Along the way it encounters the mighty Amsterdam-Rhine Canal and escapes absorption by disappearing into a pump house on the canal bank, reappearing magically from another pumphouse on the opposite bank. So can this still be called the same river?
The Dutch are - with some noted exceptions - not a romantic people. In a similar situation, the canal-builders of 18th-century Ireland preserved the integrity of their waters by building an aqueduct near Sallins in Co Kildare, to carry the Grand Canal unsullied across the sulking Liffey. Not so the Dutch.
Ask if the Linge water which continues on the other side of the canal is the same as that which entered the pumphouse, or whether the original water has been irretrievably lost, and you encounter the kind of stare reserved for a visitor from another planet. The people of Hel might relish a theological debate on the subject, but there is generally little scope for metaphysics in protecting Holland from the constant threat of inundation.
A valley fought over
The Linge is not the raison d'etre of the Linge Pad, merely an incidental. It is the landscape of the river valley which matters. Some of the most ferocious battles in the final stages of the second World War were fought here, mostly for the control of the great waterways and the escarpments which overlook them.
The landscape is shaped by the great rivers on either side, which gouge out deep channels and throw up massive ridges of sand and gravel. The engineers have accepted the limitations on their powers in the face of such natural forces, and given the rivers considerable freedom to meander.
All along their banks are broad flood plains where thousands of hectares of pasture land can absorb each inundation with minimum damage to houses and crops on higher ground.
The highest landmarks are all man-made - church towers and bridge piers. The dominance of natural forces ensures that the landscape remains almost medieval. Cattle graze and bells chimes as they did a thousand years ago.
There is a constant hum of distant motor traffic. But trudge these windswept spaces at a steady five kilometres an hour, 30 kilometres each day, with the same landmarks in view for a whole day, and you begin to appreciate how our ancestors experienced a world of vastly greater spaces.
We started out, by coincidence, on National Monument Day, when every historic building subsidised by the State must be opened to the public free of charge. This is thanks to the dedication of proud local volunteers. One such enthusiast shouted over the organ music to tell us how his tiny village church changed hands six times during successive religious wars - with minimal damage to the structure.
Reaping the winds
The most distinctive monuments are the windmills. The Vink mill in Herveld is maintained by a volunteer miller, Mr B. Zuidema. His researches have taken him all the way to Blennerville in Co Kerry, to see Ireland's only working windmill.
The Vink is a sail-tower mill. For maximum power the sails must be constantly aligned to the wind, so its timber upper section is free to rotate on a massive spindle above the single-storey brick base.
In a strong wind, it rocks like a sailing ship. As we arrived, its sail were being reefed like a yacht's to keep them from being torn away.
It takes great confidence in 18th-century workmanship to stoop under those flailing beams to reach the door.
Even the gear wheels which transfer power from the sails to the four-metre wide millstones are of wood. How do wooden teeth survive such stress with no synchromesh in sight? Through the miller's skill and respect, braking the sails by hanging from a knotted rope until the two gear wheels are rotating at exactly the same speed.
If he wants to switch from white to brown flour, he must increase the gap between the grinding stones by one millimetre. To prove that he can do it, Mr Zuidema presented us with his home-baked wholemeal cookies, still warm.
The Linge Pad from Leerdam to Nijmegen takes five days of steady plodding. And as you come to the end at the German border, a signpost declares that a continuation of the path will take you to Vienna, a mere 1,800km away. Another kind of hell.