Culemborg to Utrecht. Lek River /Merwerde Kanaal.

As promised, we took the camera into Culemborg to snap a few pics of the charming old town. The day had started drizzly, but by the time we walked from one end of the old town to the other the sun was threatening to come out and the day ended bright and sunny. 

J van R's house.

The smell of cinnamon and ginger led us to a wonderful bakery where we bought some goodies for lunch and some rather nasty, as it turned out, cookies. Oh well, they looked good and the bread was lekker.

Interesting steeples. Pity about the advertising boards.

The main town square, where they have had a Tuesday market for 550-ish years, is particularly attractive, although I wish the town council would ban the shops from putting ugly advertising boards in the middle of the pavements. It does detract from the ambience and I can't see why they can't just advertise in the window.  It was a juggle to take photos without them being centre forward.

They have had a market here every Tuesday since the middle-ages.

Back on the river, we passed through yet another enormous lock and crossed a second arm of the big Amsterdam-Riijn canal, dodging ginormous barges, until we turned into the pretty little Merwerede canal with its small locks and friendly lockkeepers. I'm sure the big lock keepers are perfectly friendly too, it's just that they are faceless up in their high control towers.

We were happy to be back to small locks and ....

...a pretty canal.

This was a different kind of lift bridge to the ones we have come across before.

After a couple of kilometers of lifting bridges, we got to a junction just outside Utrecht where there was a 3.3m fixed bridge, so we had to pull over to the side and let the Bimini and tent down. It's the first time we have taken it down since we got the new set-up, but happily it came down easily and went back up almost as quick.

Even with the tent down, we only just squeezed through.

Heidi, Michael and David will be joining us for the day tomorrow (Saturday), and the plan is to take the mast, tent, windscreens and even the flagpole down and pass through the 15 bridges on the Oudegracht through the middle of old Utrecht. We did it with Brett when we were here last in April, and it was very special.

See how law-abiding the citizens are. Even the barges comply.

While Skip was braaing burgers for supper, we heard some thumping loud music. A small truck with a disco setup on the back was barreling along the cycle path followed by a crocodile of hundreds, yes hundreds, of roller-bladers all carrying light sticks. What fun they were having. An hour or so later they passed by again going in the other direction. This is a university town and I presume they were mostly students.