Just forty minutes out of Rotterdam on the Intercity train brought us to Utrecht, our destination for the next two nights. The journey was almost all across flat, drained, agricultural former marshland, and the upper deck of the train made for good viewing. Half a dozen Great White Egrets and a Kingfisher were the most exciting sightings amongst the Coots, Mallards and Canada Geese.

And from one futuristic station to another: the entrance to Utrecht Centraal is overtopped by a massive honeycomb canopy.

The old city itself is contained within, and presumably formerly defended by, a perimeter canal, alongside which we needed to walk to get to our hotel. But the newer parts of the city, outside the canal, had some pleasant surprises including the massive hulk of the headquarters of ProRail, responsible for the railway network infrastructure of the Netherlands. This is the largest brick building in the country, dating from 1921, Art Deco in style and made of more than 22 million bricks. Put that into perspective: our iconic equivalent Battersea Power Station in its current restored state contains 7.6 million!

And what of the flying saucer on top? Well that is not original – it was part of a Millennium art festival, and has somehow survived, giving the hulk a very distinctive profile.

Right next door, and going back an era architecturally is the Art Nouveau building of the former Hygenic Laboratory, a reminder of Utrecht’s historically prestigious university. The façade of the building is decorated with memorials to some of the important scientists of the time, some of whom like Davy, Bunsen and Priestley are still household names today.

The canal too is fascinating. It seemed timeless, but we learned that in fact once the city walls were demolished in 1830, its defensive function faded and it fell into disrepair. In 1973 it was drained and in part converted into a sunken motorway, but from 2010 the motorway has been removed and the canal restored as part of a general pedestrianisation of the old city. And importantly most of it now is flanked by greenspace, good for people but also for wildlife. There are now some splendid trees, dead wood is celebrated, fungi (like Shaggy Ink-caps) were springing up and there were even a few flowers for autumnal nectar, including Duke of Argyll’s Teatree and Shaggy Soldier, the latter seemingly everywhere in the urban parts of the country, perhaps an indication of what will happen in the UK.

And right next to the canal the Muze hotel, our very pleasant home for two nights in stylish surroundings, our room being themed on the nearby Centraal Museuem. On the first evening we stayed local, found Piero’s, the local Italian restaurant, and had one of the best meals of our whole trip.

For much of the following day we also stayed close by, visiting places just across the canal. We had intended to go out to see the iconic Rietveld Schröder House, built in 1924 at the very dawn of Modernist architectural design. but the Centraal Museum was so good we spent much longer there than we had expected to. A very good excuse for a return visit!

The museum was eclectic and well laid-out, exhibits ranging from the tenth-century Utrecht ship (more than 17m long and hollowed out of a single oak trunk) in the basement to a reconstruction in the attic of the studio of the graphic artist Dick Bruna, creator of the Miffy character, who lived and worked in the city.

Between the two were numerous other delights, including chairs by Rietveld (designer of the Modernist house), ladies’ fashion, a full-sized papier-mâché horse stripped down to its internal anatomical details and art from across the ages. Of course there were Mondriaans (he hailed from nearby Amersfoort), although not the abstract forms most associated with his name now, but what struck me most was a 1923 drawing of trees by Dick van Luijn, the perfect natural model for the Cube Houses we had seen in Rotterdam the day previously.

 

There were also cyanotypes of local ‘pavement plants’ and a 1913 Tourism Club poster discouraging littering: worthy messages all round and to judge from our experience the anti-littering message seems very largely to have worked.

The museum is housed in a former monastery, and its associated church was worth a visit, especially for some lovely stained glass:

Just around the corner for the museum is the Oude Hortus, the historic former university botanic garden (the main botanic garden is on the outskirts of the city, beyond the Rietveld Schröder House, and so must await a return visit). Although quite small, it packs in a lot of features:

Autumn colours were starting to blaze through the foliage…

… and special trees included a vast, ancient Ginkgo, a fruiting Medlar (showing blatantly the reason for its French name ‘cul de chien’) and a Paper Mulberry with its distinctive orange fruit clusters.

Among the herbaceous plants out in the garden were Pokeweed, Deadly Nightshade and Castor-oil Plant. All are deadly poisonous to us, but the latter two species at least hosted the sap-sucking Southern Green Shieldbug, seemingly oblivious to the toxins. And not just surviving but thriving to judge from the clusters of multicoloured nymphs, quite a contrast to the green adults.

Other invertebrates included both Roman and Banded Snails, and a few fungi around the garden included the ink-cap Coprinus micaceus.

And then there were the glasshouses, with the less hardy and often showy plants:

Of course none more showy than the centrepiece Giant Water-lilies. Interestingly one old leaf had been laid out in the dry but upside down, showing well the struts that support such a vast leaf and the fearsome prickles that presumably give it protection from aquatic herbivores.

Later in the day and on the next morning we walked up into the centre of the old city, along the attractive canals that run through as well as around the centre, forming watery threads among the many historic buildings.

But pride of place among the historic buildings must go to the fourteenth-century Dom Tower, centrepiece of the city and visible from almost everywhere, at 112.5m the tallest church tower in the country.

The cathedral that was intended to accompany the tower was never completed, and a portion of it stands across the square as the Domkerk. It may be only a portion, but it is a towering space inside, and again features some impressive stained glass.

All this in one day, followed by an al fresco dinner (with excellent local beer) under the watchful gaze of the Dom Tower…

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Next day it was back on the train, first to Amersfoort, just 15 minutes’ east, a journey which took us through some rather different countryside, of dry, sandy lowland heath and woodland.

A small city, Amersfoort comes with the seemingly de rigeur modernised railway station, and as the home of Mondriaan, his artwork (or copies thereof) are everywhere. It was also one of the few places we noticed unofficial graffiti, and even that was really quite charming in its simplicty!

Like Utrecht writ small, the old city is surrounded by a canal, with further waterways running through it, including the Eem (or Amer) river which lends its name to the town.

The watery entrances to the old city are fortified, most impressively the Koppelpoort, completed about 1425.

 

And of course there is also the huge tower in the centre, Onze-Lieve-Vrouwetoren, more than 98m tall, the third tallest church tower in the Netherlands.

Its associated church was destroyed by a historic gunpowder explosion, but that has left us with a pleasant open square with good food and drink outlets, and a very helpful Tourist Information Centre that kindly looked after our bags while we did our walk around the city. All very pleasant, and clearly on the tourist trail, but after a couple of hours we were happy to be back to the station, to head off for the next stage of our holiday, a couple of nights in Den Haag…