Zoe on the waterways

Lemmer to Sloten

Sunny, sunny, blue skies, warm - what a gorgeous morning. We stayed in Lemmer until after lunch. We Give Lemmer a BIG thumbs up. Just the right size small town with all the amenities right on the doorstep, but none of the big town botherations like traffic, noisy buses, bustle or hoardes of people.

Lemmer at night.

There are marinas around the outskirts of town, two on the Ijsselmeer side of the lock and one just off the big Princess Margriet canal, but who would want to stay there when there is such a charming and picturesque binnehaven in the old town center steps away from bars, restaurants and rather upmarket shops for browsing?

Marina on the outskirts of Lemmer

At least 3/4 of the boats tied up on the town quays were charter boats, mostly full of Germans, which explains the German flags outside most of the restaurants. Oh, and Skip decided BOTH nights we spent in Lemmer were "date night", so we wandered 15m up the quay and had delicious greek food for dinner.

Crossing the Princess Margriet canal.

We had a grand total of 8kms to travel today, hence the late start. At some point, our cruise with no plan has turned into an Elsteden route. The Elfsteden (11 towns) is a 200km skating race that has been held for a hundred or more years whenever the canals are sufficiently frozen over in winter. In recent years, they have only been able to hold it every 10 years or so, and I think that the last one was in 1998 or thereabouts. Anyhow, it takes in 11 of the most picturesque of Friesland's towns which seemed like a good reason to follow along.

Pretty maids all in a row.

Outside of Lemmer, we dodged the big barges in the wide Princess Margriet canal and headed across to the small Langesloot leading up to Sloten (or Sleat in Fries - everything here has two names, the Dutch one and the Fries one). We couldn't believe our eyes when we came around the corner and found the most perfect mooring imaginable on a grassy corner right in front of a pretty stone bridge and a WINDMILL!!! What luck.

Isn't this the perfect mooring?

Sloten is the smallest official 'town' in Friesland and is cute, cute, cute, with one small supermarket, a post office, a lovely gastro pub, an antique shop and a post office (because it is a 'town'). There is also a really nice VVV (tourist information), with a friendly lady volunteer manning the desk. MORE maps :)

Bikes off!

This is what is on the other side of that stone bridge.

I had read somewhere that Balk, 6km away, was another pretty town so we followed a lovely cycle path through woods and villages to find it. I can report that it is indeed a pretty little town, although not a patch on Sloten.

Jaqui collecting yet more maps at the tourist information.

Just outside Balk we saw our first ever refugee camp. HUNDREDS of portacabins, lined up in rows. I thought it was a rather ugly holiday camp (like a downmarket Butlins, if one can get any further downmarket than that) until Skip pointed out that all the women had headscarves and all the men were obviously middle-eastern. Ah - the penny dropped.