Makkum to Bolsward

I think I should start calling this a bike holiday rather than a cruise as we are definitely clocking up more mileage on the bikes than we are in the boat. Todays route from Makkum to Bolsward was 11km and this afternoons bike ride around town and the neighbouring villages was 29km. And my butt can feel every one of them!

It was another lovely sunny morning. 

Such a shame there is so much boat traffic :) :)

We saw ONE other boat on this canal today.

Bolsward is a medium size town with all the usual shops in it's pretty old town centre, which is on an island surrounded by canals. The excellent moorings are just after the first bridge into town to both the left and right of the bridge. It looks like they have recently been upgraded with new dock and power points all the way along. In some towns the power points are few and far between requiring two power cables to reach the plugs.  They have also, sensibly, put rubbish skips all the way along. You would be surpised how many times you battle to find somewhere to dump your rubbish with the result that some boaters leave bags lying around next to the small bins in the streets. The mooring fee was 15 euros, which is pretty much the standard price for 10m in Friesland including the 2 euro 'tourist tax'. The power etc is included and there is excellent wifi. I presume there is a shower/toilet block somewhere but as we don't need it I dunno. Turn left at the bridge and there is a Texaco petrol station with pumps right on the canal for refuelling. Useful.

The moorings at Bolsward. They could probably get at least 50 - 60 boats in here as the moorings are both sides of the canal and extend around the corner. In summer the prime spots would be this side under the trees for shade.

I mentioned a while ago that we are following the Elfsteden route - more or less. The route takes in the eleven cities through which a skating competition passes through if the winter is cold enough with sufficient thickness of ice on the canals. As it happens, the last one was in 1997, although apparently they had great hopes for 2012, a pretty chilly winter with temperatures as low as -23, but it was called off at the last minute as temperatures rose and the ice melted. What does happen with more regularity, in fact every year except during WWII and in 2001 during the foot-and-mouth scare, is a cycle tour/race following the same 235km route. It takes place on Whitsum Monday, (known as Pinkster in the Netherlands) which this year is on June 5th and starts and finishes in Bolsward.  They get so many entries each year that they had to introduce a maximum limit of 12 000 !!!!  As you can imagine the town is already gearing up with Elstedentocht-everything on sale in all the shops. I imagine it must be quite a sight. According to the blurb, they have special medals for anyone who has done the tour 50 or 60 times !!!  How many?? You have to start as a kid and be well up there to qualify.

Now, you know I wasn't here in the middle of winter, so yes, I pinched this off the internet to give you some idea of what the Elfstedentocht is all about - the skating one, that is.

As we have such good internet here, I was surfing around and discovered that there is a Wok Inn ….. YAY!  "Date Night" AGAIN.

The most imposing building in town is the town hall built in Fries high-renaissance-style in 1614-1617