Woke up to a lovely sunny morning -hooray! The destination was Leeuwarden, the capital city of Friesland but it was such a gorgeous day that, after a re-consult with the chart, we decided to take a detour through the Earnewald national park which is a mess of lakes and waterways. Just glorious.

Quiet waterway in the national park.

Very rural, no cars, just silence and waterfowl. There are loads of free moorings all over the place, giving one an idea of what it must be like in mid-season. The detour added at least another 3 hours to the travel. Well spent.

Pootling along, the waterway suddenly intersected with a canal and to our enormous surprise this suddenly appeared behind us. He only shared our relatively narrow channel for a couple of hundred yards, thankfully.

Waiting for the bridge man to eat his lunch. We were tied up outside the museum of this charming little hamlet and as we had an hour to wait we wandered around. 

This "shop" is part of a boat restore business specialising in traditional wooden boats. Skip was very taken with all the wood and brass bits and pieces, and, of course, the models.

I had to ask what this was! It's the chicken stairway up to their penhouse coop.

Anyone remember these?

There were half a dozen old boats for sale. This cutie will set you back 29 000 euros.

As we approached Leeuwarden the canal

signs became more complicated.

And now here we are in Leeuwaarden.

The moorings in the city are next to the gardens. Nice lawn and big trees.
The old town is just steps away. 

We plan to be here another night as there are lots of museums in town and I plan to visit a couple. It's a university town, with that special atmosphere you only get with a lot of students around and I'm not just referring to the beer fumes...