Well, I've been looking again at my tracks for the Tour and have spotted that, when we had tea / beer at Alphen on the Saturday afternoon on the way to Breda, we were just five kilometres (!!) north of Baarle, a place which is the last survivor of the strange way the boundary was drawn between the Netherlands and Belgium when the Belgians broke away from the Dutch in 1830.
One half, Baarle-Hertog, is Belgian while the other, Baarle-Nassau, is Dutch. Baarle-Hertog is made up of Belgian enclaves totally surrounded by Dutch territory. But get this: part of the territory that makes up Baarle-Nassau consists of seven Dutch enclaves totally surrounded by some of the Belgian enclaves (which are themselves, of course, totally surrounded by Dutch territory) making those Dutch enclaves the only examples in Europe of *double-enclaves*!!
The border was drawn that way in the 1830s so that Catholic parishes could be in the newly independent Belgium while Calvinist parishes remained in the Netherlands. The most recent attempt to smooth it all out was agreed by the two governments and by the two sets of church authorities ... and then rejected by the inhabitants who, after the best part of two centuries, are rather attached to the everyday arrangements the enclaves entail!
So NEXT TIME we go the Low Countries, please please please can we include this spot on our Tour?