I can remember visiting my grandparents. A dike across the road was barely holding back the water, lapping at the bike path above. Going to bed, I wondered what would happen should those three meters of heaped earth give way. I would surely drown.

It wasn’t always that bad, but the river would often overflow. Hundreds of years ago, the Rhine Valley used to be marshland and people would die of malaria.

No chance of that now, though. You can walk to the middle of what used to be one of the largest rivers of Europe. What you’re seeing is the deepest part, dredged out for shipping. That’s all that’s left of Father Rhine. His bleached bones and the skinny remnant of what the remaining glaciers bleed.