“So what’s the first thing you thought about when I said I was going on a flying visit?“ I asked. ”Cheese“ said my colleague. ”Cheese ...and clogs“. Which is what the road sign said, picked out in white tiles: Cheese & Clogs. ”Tourist trap“, said my friend.

How about chocolate, canals, culture too - just sticking to the letter ‘C’? Well I saw all of these on my recent all too-brief-visit to Holland. I’m only in the country for one whole day on a family visit - and my digital camera already has over a hundred photos on the card. Luckily, it is quite easy to leaf through these on iPhoto, the image management software on my Mac. You can flag up the best of the bunch as you go and return to these later. After a bit, themes start to emerge.

I’m jumping ahead to the second morning of my stay, but the first image I wanted to include was the woman with the white blouse. Something called ‘Cheese Pop’ is happening in the small square in historic Edam. The crowd are all watching the show behind me - all gyrating dancers and amplified music - she’s not selling any Edam cheese and she’s not happy. It’s really all in that fiercely contained body language. It’s one of those glimpses of a potential special image you catch out of the corner of your eye. Then you hurry to capture it before anything changes. I don’t suppose she even noticed that I took the picture. But isn’t it splendid the way she is standing framed against the interior of the cheese store? I started to look for other images from the trip to go with this one for the blog.

If you don’t think of Dutch cheese, you might suggest tulips. The tulip of course is one of the few symbols which appears on every digital camera and denotes the close-up, or macro setting. In June the glorious, eye-popping colour of the bulb fields is over for the year but you don’t have to go far to find tulip flowers. This young woman in her traditional costume stands ready to welcome visitors to a tourist shop at Marken harbour. Her luscious bunch of wooden tulips rest lightly on her bare arm. She has a shy smile and her skirts swish around her ankles as if she’s just stepped forward. A little kitsch, but very typical, very Dutch.

The grey angel is a little more unusual. She’s part of a series of sculptures by different artists which you can tour around, preferably by bike. You’d have to search to find her, even if you had the map, as she’s tucked in among the twisted streets which wind between the wooden houses on Marken island. Her companions are distributed along the causeway and footpath which follows the top of the dyke near Volendam. From here the island is a grey smudge between the sky and water. You can catch a ferry back to Marken, or just sit and watch the procession of boats under sail, a view reminiscent of the fine paintings in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

The crowd of scarecrows is in a little village on one of the side roads. End of term activities at the local school have produced a wonderful spectacle for passers-by. I take several pictures of the man with the mallet whacking stakes into the ground. Pirates and dancers shiver in the strong breeze. We wonder how long their plastic bag heads and straw-filled socks will survive. This exuberant Scarecrowess in her vibrant pink dress framed by the sunlit green lawn behind her catches my eye.

We come across another end-of-the-summer-term custom. Older pupils’ school bags are hung from flagpoles outside their houses to show that they have passed all their exams and will soon be graduating on to higher education. The Dutch are good at celebrations and congratulations - you just have to smile.