26 August
Gorinchen to Leerdam

Looking at my map, which I do often (I LOVE maps), I noticed a river going nowhere. Most boats heading out of the town head up the Merwede Canal or out to the Merwede River, but I have a fondness for small rivers going nowhere, so up the Linge we went today.



This photo is apropos of nothing and should have been in yesterday's blog about the fishermen's museum. I am sure there are some of you who remember these. Maybe you have spent longer than you wished pulling on that string. I know I have no fond memories of our unlamented Seagull.

The river is navigable for 35 km up to a small town called Geldermalsen and is everything a small river to nowhere should be - windy (as in curvy, not breezy), tree-lined, full of reed beds with plenteous water birds, and small villages with farmyards and some gorgeous homes. And all the way along, there were people swimming from boats and the river banks - must be clean water. 

Some of today's homes:

Not bad, hey.

We only got half-way, as we had left rather late, and moored up at the Oude Horn yacht club in the small town of Leerdam (10 euros a night, pay meter electricity - 50c pieces).

Now it turns out that Leerdam is quite famous, although we had not heard of it. It is the glass capital of the Netherlands and home to the Royal Leerdam Crystal factory - creators of some of the world's best art glass.

Skip was so fascinated by the glass, the demo movie and the attractive and charming assistant, that he forgot to take any pictures. "Did you get one for the blog?" I asked. He dashed back and hurriedly took this, although there were more spectacular displays which you will have to just take my word for.
They had pieces from about 15 euros up to 3 000 - I would say most of the things on this shelf were in the 300 - 500 euros range.

There are dozens of small glass blowers in the town and we plan to visit one of them, right here next to the dock, tomorrow morning. We did visit the Royal Leerdam and looked at some of their amazing stuff in their shop, but they only have one tour a day and it was over. They don't have any on weekends either.

They don't just produce art glass here either, right next door to the Royal Leerdam is another huge factory where they make 5 million beer bottles every day, 7 days a week. That's a LOT of beer bottles, and 90% of it is from recycled glass, which is a reassuring statistic.

Today's windmill. You should be grateful that I only include the occasional windmill, but this one was a bit different.

The weather today was thankfully cooler, although still 29 on the aft deck this afternoon. But the light breeze made it more agreeable. Tomorrow will be more of the same, although the weatherman thought we might get the odd shower, but then he thought that today and he was wrong.

I managed to get a load of laundry done at the yacht club this afternoon (I had decided it was too much of a faff at Gorinchem) -  5 euros for a wash and dry. I only bothered with the bedding as the rest I can do on the boat. Everything dries in a flash in this weather.

This came down the canal in Gorinchem today. Three surfboards and a sofa. Well, why not?