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Motivational speakers, counsellors, and other arch-criminals who make their living out of telling people visualisation is critical to success in life, might be interested to know it doesn’t extend to other people. That’s called tyranny and I’m working on it.

I had a dream once. It was simple, achievable, and, as far as I was concerned, irresistible. It went like this. See Holland, land of my forefathers and mothers, by bicycle with my family. What could be nicer – flat roads, bicycle paths (17,000km worth), no helmets and the comfort of knowing that the answer to the inevitable "are we there yet?" kvetch is like as not to be a smug "Yes, actually we are".

But best of all, in fact, unparalleled anywhere, is the mode of transport. Not just a bicycle but a Dutch bicycle. A big up-right, smooth-geared, basketted honey of a thing. Like an elegant draught horse. Only faster.

They’re so beautiful I once spent a daft sum of money importing one to New Zealand. It’s fabulous but now I hanker for the souped-up electric version. You still have to pedal but the battery simply doubles your speed. It would just eat up those delinquent hills which, frankly, should have been flattened from the beginning just like Manhattan was. I’m working on that too.

Of course there’s always the lighter aluminium version or I could go a natty fold-up job. Just about fits into your hand-bag. Wouldn’t that be useful?

Anyway you get the picture. Mad as a bicycle me. And visualising like one thing. Here’s the happy family, wind ruffling our hair as we whir under the dappled shade of spearmint green oak trees. And look, here we are again barely straining as we negotiate the tiny bump of an ancient bridge arching over a canal in a picturesque Dutch village. Sooo cute. And finally here we are at the climactic end of the trip, waists whittled to roughly the size of a twig, calves shapely, eyes glittering with rude good health, all as fit and slender as whippets.

And it works. Kind of. We get to Holland. We hire bikes. We buy bike maps (essential). We plan a route. Alright I plan a route. I’m torn between the peat route (following a historic peat extraction trail), the reed route (along grassy waterways) or the eleven cities route, tracing the path skaters follow when the weather is cold enough and they tour 11 cities non-stop day and night en masse. What to do?

In the meantime we practice. Day tours to and from relatives’ home in Haarlem. Big mistake. The hire bikes look like they’ve been extracted from a canal and then run over by a truck. Also they’re too big for my son. He looks like he’s trying to straddle a cow. He looks scared.

But us visualisers will never get anywhere by being deflected by other people’s dreams such as going by train or car. So I pedal on regardless and try a little positive reinforcement -"Isn’t this fantastic?" "Don’t you just love this?" type stuff. My son sighs "Sort of" and adds "But I think you need someone who likes this more than sort of."

Well as I say us visualisers must stay on target so of course I ignore this. Even when I hear him beseech my husband plaintively "Are you hating this as much as I am?" I focus and visualise, visualise. In case that doesn’t work, I speed up before I can hear the reply. I keep planning. I pick Friesland. Quiet, rural, watery, pretty. Good starting point for a journey back to Haarlem via a boat ride and through North Holland.

Great idea. Pity about the other 15 million people and 12 million bikes. Busy? By crikey, it’s a shocker. Sometimes it takes two changes of the lights before we can cross the road and that’s on a bike path. And someone’s always there first – museums, hotels, anything with a queue attached. Usually a German as it happens.

Anyway the first night I part with a suitcase full of money and get a room that smells of smoke, doesn’t have linen for more than two people or a jug to make tea even though we pay extra for this and even has instructions on the wall about what residents are expected to do. Mop the floor, clean the bathroom and put out the rubbish.

This reminds me of a youth hostel so the next night we try a youth hostel. The best in Holland we’re told. But it reminds me of a night in the cells. Metal furniture, unlined brick walls and lots of lino does that.

We share the hostel with approximately half of Germany’s errant youth who have a disco till 2am and when it stops someone in the next room falls promptly asleep and begins snoring. Loud enough to blow your head off. My husband offers me Prozac. I say I didn’t know he was on it and how long does it take to kick in. He says No, I meant paracetamol.

In the morning my son says he’s tired, the bike is crap and the road signs for bicycles are impossible to read. My husband says he’s tired, his bottom hurts and the accommodation is crap.

By now I’m tired and sick to death of my own internal video. Change the channel please. New visualisation desperately needed.

And then we meet Ada. We wash up in Grou, which sounds like an Alsatian barfing, slope into the tourist office, and ask bleakly for reasonable accommodation. The woman says pensions are best and gives me Ada’s phone number and tells me the price. I don’t believe her. At 35fl a night per person it’s cheaper than the youth hostel.

Ada has just turned 65, smokes like a stack of chimneys, plays bridge, and is the sort of person who could find joy in a train smash. She brings us tea and sweet cakes, installs us in a remote-controlled bed which can bend any which way, shows me her brand-new bike (a big-boned Simplex with shock absorbers – massive) and raves about cycling. She’s a total nut for it. Why only last Monday she cycled 65km to Makkum and Workum and then took the train back. With the wind behind her she can knock off 90 km no trouble. She’d come with us if she didn’t have a bridge match on the net to finish.

She calls our boneshakers "rammelkasten" and says she knows someone who can help. And that’s when it happens. Ada’s visualisations light up the room like a torch, which is passed from one person to the next. In less than a nanosecond my family are suddenly cycling converts. With a few modifications.

We could do day tours and come back each evening to Ada says my son gazing at her as if she’s his long-lost birth mother and he can’t bear to leave.

Look at the map, says my husband. Grou is like the hub in a wheel with spokes going out to all the major towns in Friesland, he says, almost overplaying his hand with such an unsubtle metaphor. Could we, he begs, sneaking a fond glance Ada’s way. What am I? Chopped liver?

But, oh okay, I say in a reluctant good sort manner neatly disguising a "gotcha suckers" hoorah. I suppose it would solve the luggage problem. Leave everything with Ada. We hire bikes from her man in Grou and they’re so new they still have the price on them. Also he doesn’t ask for a deposit of 300fl, passport and insurance like the other cyclo fee-gougers.

And so this becomes the formula. Find nice little old lady offering bed and breakfast and prey on her for a week. Cycle daily, be welcomed with tea and cakes on arrival home, eat cardiac inducing breakfast, reluctantly (yeah right) accept extra goodies for lunch and cycle daily. If we go too far, load bikes on train and rail back. It’s a cinch. Oh and we ask Ada to translate the cycle signs for us. Life gets much easier.

So what do we see when you’re on the road? Well look here’s one of us riding apple-cheeked along the reed route and here we are on a cobbled street negotiating a dear wee bridge in a town that looks like little Venice and here’s us eating lunch by the side of the road, bikes casually strewn on the spearmint-green grass. Sooo cute.

Oh yes, well it was a bit wet on this day but the Dutch sell really cheap plastic pants and coats so you hardly notice the downpour. And like I said to the family, visualising a sunny day really does work.

And here we all are on the last day. Not quite as slender as I would have hoped thanks to a daily round of tea and cakes but fit? Never felt better.

And happy? Look at those smiles. I don’t think I’ve ever seen people happier.

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