Kerr Barging Blogs

Zwartsluis has won our award for the friendliest, most helpful people in our Netherlands travel. It is also the place where we discovered the problems with our shower and started the large task of fixing it.

Coincidentally, today, 15 days later, the shower and tiling and shower base plus plumbing are all fixed and back together. Now we can have real showers again instead of using the bath. Hooray! From this, the mathematicians among you will have calculated that we are 15days behind with the blogs. This is true, but we are rapidly catching up. Most of them are written but the editting and adding photos takes time and now the shower is complete, we have more free time.

Traversing the Randmeren (76km stretch of lakes)
To reach Zwartsluis via Kettelmeer and Zwarte Meer, (Meers are lakes)  both significant bodies of water but in many places very shallow, we needed to dust off our navigational skills for the first time in Europe: to interpret cardinal marks, to check off the numbering on the port and starboard markers so that we turned at the right time to enter a particular channel; to use the binoculars on quite a foggy day to look ahead to identify a change of direction; and to avoid windsurfers and para gliders operating across our path.

Water activities on the Randmeren

All went well and we turned into Zwartsluis and found a mooring at the town quay. The harbour is full of old Dutch boats so we felt quite at home with our neighbours.

Zwartsluis
Zwartsluis

The lady in the tourist bureau was very helpful in telling us about the town, including the supermarket; the harbourmaster went out of his way to give us extra information about a particular card to which we are entitled as an historic ship; the chandler was very informative about places to go for the bits and pieces David needed to fix the shower up and get new oil filters; the oil filter man gave us a most useful document in English about the tourist towns in the area. People in the street and at the quay were very friendly and chatty, so we came away feeling a bit more positive about visiting the Netherlands.
As we left the town was setting up a barge just near us as the stage for a performance that night of "Water Music", including several town bands and some well- known singers. The stage was being decorated with branches and sunflowers, the sound and lighting men were sorting everything out and altogether it was a busy scene but sadly we had to leave to make room for them, so could not be part of it. The stage was actually a large flat barge that was pushed into position right next to us- so some people had to leave evern earlier than we did.

The town had a small and quaint museum. It was more a group of collections donated by people. There was the workshop and samples from a clog maker who worked there for many years. They also had a workshop and samples from leather workers. There was a stuffed animal collection.

Clogs from birth (right clog) to death (left clog)

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave

Setting up for the concert

Well, the Soccer World Cup is over. We usually don't follow this event in great detail but with France, Belgium and the Netherlands as well as Australia involved, we were drawn into it this year. We could watch live the first match of each day though the second was a bit late. Despite that, we watched the first half of many of the late games. A poster with the draw enabled us to keep track of the results.

While we were in Belgium the week before competition started there was a great deal of excitement already about the "Red Devils". All the kids were kicking balls nd even babies were wearing Red Devils outfits. Most of the Belgian barges had large flags flying. In the Netherlands, as the tournament got underway,  there was orange everywhere. The commercial barges were flying orange flags saying "Hup Holland"; the shops were decked out in orange bunting and it seemed that everyone had bought an orange outfit, sometimes quite stylish. We did raise our boxing kangaroo flag when Australia was playing, but took it down fairly soon after our loss to the Netherlands; the consensus seemed to be that Australia could be proud of their performance. We could console ourselves with the Australian men's victory over the Netherlands the day before in the Hockey World Cup final in the Hague.   

So, we watched each of our "favourites" fall by the wayside. France, Belgium, Brazil and the Netherlands.

Even when we did not have the TV on we had clues to Holland's progress from cheers and shouts in local pubs. When they won the quarter final (after midnight our time) we were woken by the sound of fireworks, horns and sirens. When we did not hear any noise on the night of the semi-final, we were sure the Netherlands had lost. We heard the celebrations of each of their goals in the loser's final, even though everyone we asked said that the match did not mean anything to them. Maybe that was why there were no fireworks, just horns.

Now it is over for another few years; no orange clothes are to be seen and the bunting is cleared away. There are even fewer little boys kicking soccer balls around. No-one is talking about it at all now.

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave

s'Hertogenbosch- Soccer Fever

We decided not to take Anja right into Amsterdam. The descriptions or routes and marinas was just too complicated to risk when we had little children to consider. At the most popular marina, we might be rafted three or four abreast, and have to move to allow others to manoeuvre. The town of Weesp was a much more congenial stopping place and the train took us into the centre of the city in 15mins.

Amsterdam of an earlier era- with boats like Anja

David and I bought museum cards which allow us access to many Amsterdam Museums and also the majority of small town museums.

Amsterdam and its canals

We visited several Museums: The Rijk with its beatifully presented art treasures, the Maritime Museum where we particularly enjoyed the display of old atlases; the van Gogh Museum with an excellent chronological presentation of his works and finally the Amsterdam Museum which gave a good history of the city. We also enjoyed a canal cruise to make up for the fact that we were not bringing Anja through the city. In fact most of the canals would have been inaccessible to us as the bridges are too low and many are not open to everyone.  

Amsterdam seen from the canal

In Amsterdam English was widely spoken and displays were almost always offered in Dutch and English (as well as German and sometimes French). This was quite different from the other cities we had been too and it gave us a chance to understand better what we were seeing. We try to access information in the local language but we our electronic translators often let us down. Amsterdam itself was very busy and crowded with tourists whereas Weesp was a beautiful and calm spot to be. It also had n excellent and direct train conection toSchipol so that our daughter, son-in-law and grandaughters could  easily travel to Schipol for their 'plane back to Australia.

 Amsterdam Street

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave

The Amsterdam replica

Ancient 15th century atlas

Bike parking at the Railway Station

At the Rijk Museum

At the Rijk Museum- the Delft room

At the Rijk Museum

Rembrandt's Black Watch

Our Cruising Guide describes the Vecht River as one of the most beautiful waterways in the Netherlands. From the moment we entered it we were delighted by the houses along its banks with gardens full of flowers which seemed to spill into the river. This continued through almost the whole 40 kilometres. Wealthy people from Amsterdam had built country houses here in the 17th and 18th centuries, and that tradition seems to have been maintained. There were also many houseboats and some join it to the East.

The River Vecht

The River Vecht

We stayed at two towns along this stretch. The first was Breukelen, said to have given Brooklyn New York its name as many Dutch settled there; it was a busy town on a Saturday afternoon with a number of specialty shops such as an excellent cheese shop and also a baker we sampled the wares.  The gardens were spectacular and for the first time in our lives we were bowled over by the hydrangeas which were flowering prolifically in a great array of colours and shades.

Breukelen Cheese Shop

The second town we visited was Weesp, chosen because it allowed an easy 20 minute train trip to Amsterdam and to Schipol Airport for our family's return to Australia. This was a very pleasant town, again with good shops and the best ice cream shop we have found in Europe. The five of us (the baby was thought too young to try yet) sampled a wide range of delicious flavours for a very reasonable price. And best of all, the park was almost like an adventure playground, with cubby houses, a slippery dip, swings and even an old- fashioned see- saw. There was plenty of room to play and our baby, 9 months old that day and a demon for balls, enjoyed crawling around chasing hers, wearing herself out for the long journey home. Meanwhile the 3 year old created an imaginary world in the cubby house. We were very sad to say farewell the next day.

Anja, very comfortable atr Weesp

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave

Grand House, the Vecht

The River Vecht

The next day's travel led us along part of the Maas, and then briefly on the Waal River followed by the Lek- the two latter are tributaries of the Rhine. These three huge waterways flow into the sea through Rotterdam. At this point they were not too daunting. More of a fear was the Rhine- Amsterdam Canal, which we had chosen not to go onto after reading the warnings about many huge commercial barges speeding along, but we had no choice when the first lock on a more minor route, the Merwedekanal, was unexpectedly out of operation.

The old port area- Utrecht

In practice the main issue was crossing the traffic lane to get to the correct side, and then at the end to leave the canal. Once we were on our way we could cling to the bank and let everyone else overtake us. It was a good quick trip and we soon darted across to enter the Merwedekanal at the other end, and tie up in Jutphaas, a suburb of "Nieuwegen", a new town built in the 1970s to serve the growing population of Utrecht. This was a very comfortable and convenient mooring adjacent to a tree- lined street and close to a bus stop to take us into Utrecht. We had originally planned to take the boat there but closer analysis suggested that many of the bridges would be too low for us, so it seemed better to place ourselves conveniently outside.

Old Utrecht with its canals

We travelled into the city and enjoyed the interesting architecture and the historic port areas and canals which had made the city so successful over many centuries. It is a university city- the University of Utrecht dates back to 1636 and the this was reflected in the lively street life. The bike is king here. There are few cars in the ancient city centre, only bikes. There is a multi storey bike parking area and plenty of smaller ones. Another feature of the city was the large amount of building activity on huge projects. There is a large mural to celebrate the fact that next year's Tour de France begins in Utrecht, already a cause for celebration a year before it will happen. 

 The Dam Tower

Best Regards,

Penny & Dave

 University courtyard