Utrecht.

The sun came out for the family's visit. Good thing too, as after lunch on board we had to take down the windows, tent, mast and flagpole to get through the 15 bridges through the Oudegracht which runs right through the centre of the old town.  

David getting ready to duck.

Being a sunny Saturday the canal side cafes and restaurants were chock-a-block with people enjoying themselves. There were many mutual "Cheers" between boat and shore! It was lovely to see them again.

You take my photo, I'll take yours!

The bridges are all a maximum of 3.15 at the top of the centre arch.

The cafes were full of people enjoying the sunny afternoon.

We moored on the north side of town and the family left as they had to be back in Amsterdam by six. We got out the maps to figure out the next weeks cruise plan and discovered it would be much better to start out from where we had left in the morning, the other side of town. So back down came all the windows, etc, (we're getting good at this) and back down the gracht we went. By now it was sunset and the bridges and cafes had their lights on. It was very pretty. 

Happily it's a much nicer mooring than on the north, so the crew were happy! Too many drunk party boats on the other side, one of which bumped into a piling right behind Zoe and, to our great amusement, lost their BBQ over the back, coals and all.

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.

Maurik to Culemborg. Neder-Rijn / Lek River.

There was a brisk wind and grey skies when we set off this morning with only 20 or so kilometers to do today. We had'nt gone far downriver when we spotted a small harbour with some interesting looking boats so we pulled in for lunch. 

The tiny harbour was somewhat overpowered by an enormous hotel boat.

The town was Dijk bij Duurstede, a very pretty old town full of galleries and antique shops. 

Dijk bij Duurstede

He reminds me of someone ....

We followed some signs up to the kasteel. There are only a couple of towers left, but very picturesque they are set in gorgeous gardens. 

Would make a wonderfully romantic spot for a wedding we agreed, and according to someone we spoke to later, that and other events is what it is now used for. 

I'm happy to report that the kasteel complies with the "Display of White Vases" regulation.

We shopped in the town square at the butcher, the baker, and the cccc .... cheese shop. Sorry, there was no candlemaker.

The harbourmaster had recommended an eetcafe close to the harbour dyke and we stopped in for lunch. It is run by volunteers and staffed by disabled young employees. The apple gebak was heavenly. Turned out the volunteer on duty was originally from Hermanus. 

We can recommend the appelgebak

The town was gearing up for a Shanty Festival this weekend where teams from all over the country, and Germany, come to perform sea shanties and other traditional boating songs. 

Part of the show is a display of old traditional working boats and that was why the harbor was full of them. There were more arriving every minute so we had to vacate our spot to make room.

Making friends with the crew.

These old town are protected by dykes and you can see why. The most recent high water was in 1995.

A little further down river we crossed over the Amsterdam-Rijn canal and BOY we realised that when it came to barges we had, thus far, seen nothin'! HUGE HUGE HUGE barges, one after the other lining up to pass through the locks just past the junction. There are two locks, side by side, 350 meters long. Thank goodness little Zoe was just crossing over. Even so, we had to do some dodging.

According to the sign, this Volvo Duett completed the Pan America expedition from Alaska to Panama in 1965. I knew it was a 1965 Volvo Duett because ....

... it said so on the back.

Another 10 km and we pulled into the small town of Culemborg for the night. I had picked the town as our next stop as I liked the name. There is a wonderful old wine estate in the Cape called Culemborg. 

They were selling Cape Culemborg wine in town, so we had to have one with the ribeye steak we bought in Dijk. This is the Estate's plonk, but very drinkable it was.

We discovered why when we took a stroll through town - this is where Jan van Riebeeck came from and the wine estate is named after this town. For the non-South Africans who did'nt grow up with J van R drummed into them in history class, he was the first founder of the Cape Colony in 1652. His house is now a museum and is just one of a town full of interesting old buildings. We left the camera on the boat but will take another stroll over the dyke into town tomorrow and snap a few.

For those who may not know, if you click on the photos above, you get them in a bigger size.

Arnhem to Maurik. Neder-Rijn.

We left shortly after 9am and headed down the Neder-Rijn in bright sunshine. The jackets were stripped off and we even opened a couple of the tent flaps. Big wide river with plenty of room for little Zoe and the constant stream of barges most of which were headed up-river. 

It was a pleasure to be doing our normal cruising speed of 10km. The river is much more interesting than the IJssel, with villages and farms and even a couple of "hills"! Yes, there are a few areas of high ground in these parts, usually wooded which made them appear even higher.

Ferry

There are only a few bridges along this stretch and they are very high, so no need to open. In between the towns and bridges, small ferries take cars and bikes across the river. 

Our progress was hindered only by two ginormous locks. We had to wait 20 minutes at the first one along with another motor cruiser. 

The first lock we shared, but I think there's room for both of us ...

The second lock was opening its doors as we approached and once the four loaded barges passed out we sailed straight in. We had the whole 260m lock to ourselves!

Plenty of room.

All the barges we passed today were fully laden and, to our inexperienced eyes, appeared to be on the verge of floundering. Put it this way, if the crew needed to walk from the stern to the bow (which would take awhile anyhow), they would get their feet wet. Good thing there are no waves on rivers.

FULLLL !!!

Just as we were negotiating the second lock the heavens opened and it rained, hard, for the next half hour to our next mooring spot in the Maurik lake. 

The island-dotted lake was once a stone quarry and at places is over 25m deep. Can't say for sure as our depth sounder is only set to 25 and it went off the scale. There are a couple of marinas, a yacht club, golf, tennis courts and rows and rows of rental chalets. This is obviously a popular summer holiday spot although we saw not another soul. We tied up to the reception dock at one of the marinas (the one with a washing machine :) ) and it was at least 2 hours before a man showed up to collect his money. 

A wash and dry was 6.50 euros. That's a medium price. The cheapest we have found is still at Strandhorst, our 'home' port, where a wash and dry will set you back 4.50.
The WiFi is free, as it is in most places, albeit usually not strong enough to stream any video. We do listen to the radio quite a bit. When the BBC news gets too repetitive/boring/depressing we switch across to radio 4 extra. Last night was Round the Horne followed by the Navy Lark. Oh my, I can remember listening to these on Springbok Radio when I was a kid, and they were oldies even then! Oldies, but goodies.

We came across houseboats again today.

Arnhem.

We were expecting a lot of rain today, so kept an eye on the sky all day. Put the bikes ashore as the yacht club is a couple of km from the centre and bundled up in raingear.  

First thing on the agenda was shoe shopping for me as the sole of my only pair of rainproof shoes had fallen off and we were expecting rain, remember. If shopping is your thing then I can recommend the Arnhem town centre. Never saw so many shoe shops, amongst others, and that was ticked off the list in no time. 

We found our way to the central station and hopped a bus out to the airborne museum. It's not far out of town, but we were expecting rain, remember, so left the bikes locked up outside the ING bank. Figured they'd be safe under their security cameras.

The Airborne Museum. 

We took no photos inside. Somehow that seemed disrespectful.

The museum is housed in the old hotel Hartenstein, that the British used as their headquarters during the shortlived campaign. The allies tried, and failed, to capture the strategic bridges on the Rhine, amongst others. Although they did manage to capture the Arnhem bridge, for various reasons still debated today, after 10 days it was retaken and they had to retreat.  Like all war museums, it was a sometimes disturbing experience albeit very well presented. The photos of the destruction of the town after the battle were particularly illuminating given all the modern buildings in the town. 

The Bridge too Far.

The museum has beautiful grounds with walking trails but we expecting rain, remember. They had their commemoration recently as the campaign began on September 17 1944 and there are still wreathes and flowers on the memorials. The British seem to have a tendency to memorialise failure. Both here and Dunkirk spring to mind. I mean no disrespect, especially given the awful losses and the dreadful result of the extra 8 month of war the failure of the Arnhem campaign had on the Netherlands.

We will rewatch the film when we get home. Apparently it was actually filmed at the bridge in Deventer as that town was largely untouched by the bombing, unlike Arnhem.

This lovely woody trail is close to the centre of town.

Back in town we decided to chance the rain and took a bike ride out of town in a lovely wooded area we had passed on the bus. HUGE trees. Wonderful. On the way back to the boat, Clive just had to cycle over the bridge. I decided it was a bridge too far for me and I went straight back to the boat (actually I was dying to pee!). 

And just as I pulled up to the stern of Zoe, FINALLY it started to rain. How's that for timing. 

Hattem to Arnhem, via Zutphen.

We've had two SUCH boring days, I had nothing to report, hence no blog yesterday. And today has been more of the same snore.

Teensy little harbour in Zutphen.

We had to get down the IJssel river, which is not unnattractive, but unendingly the same with almost no towns or anything of interest along the way. I'm even missing all those lifting bridges! Worse was a 4km current running against us the whole way. At the same revs we would normally be doing 11km, instead of the 7 we were managing. At times it was down to 5.5! We had to stay REALLY close to the bank where we had fractionally less current, but required constant concentration. Tiring. It was such a relief to finally turn into the Neder-Rijn where there is almost no current and what little there is is running with us.

Fully loaded!

We stopped overnight in the teeniest marina in Zutphen which looked like a lovely town but we only went ashore for a pizza as we need to get to Utrecht by Friday to meet up with David, Heidi and Michael on Saturday. We also wondered, yesterday, why there was so little river traffic, only to discover it was because it was Sunday and everyone was saving it up for today. Barge, after barge, after barge, after barge ...... and big buggers thundering along pushing poor little Zoe into the side.

Hotel boat headed for Germany.

So now we are tied up in the yacht club in Arnhem where we will stay 2 days. This is the location of the WWII Battle of Arnhem (of the Bridge too Far fame) and we want to go to the Airborne war museum and visit the war graves tomorrow. 

Tied up at the yacht club in Arnem right in front of the bar.

Five minutes after the lines were were attached 

we were presented with the first cold one.

We try to find a berth close to the WiFi router :)

Zwaartsluis to Hattem.

They promised us rain, but happily they got it wrong and shortly after we headed down the Zwaarte Water we were hunting out the sunblock again :)

With no lift bridges and only one lock, we made good time until we made the turn into the IJssel river where the current was running around 3 kph against us. This is, we later learned, low for this time of year and it is usually running a lot more.

Garden across the road from the marina.

I had stuck a pin in the chart at the point I figured we would have had enough for the day and the spot turned out to be Hattem. And what a happy choice it turned out to be. The marina is nothing special, but has excellent WiFi (mainly because we picked a berth underneath the router) and stroom is included.

Hattem city gate. We climbed four flights
of dark, steep stairs, to find the window panes at the top
a bit too grubby for photos.  So, you'll have to
take my word for the nice view.

The town, however is really pretty. Lots of tourist type shops, cafes, pubs and restaurants. I think it is an "outing" kind of place where locals take a drive to and have lunch. Great for wandering around, and only steps away from the boat.

Chocolatier at work.

The fruits of her labours. They were giving out free samples :)
The town hosts an annual chocolate festival on the 10th October
which we will unfortunately miss :(

Skip had a haircut on the dock when we got back and then cleaned the side of his boat. He will reward himself shortly with a pot of mussels and a beer on the aft deck while dreaming of his favourite shop of the trip which we discovered today in Hattem, and no, it wasn't the chocolate shop!

This shop must have had over a hundred ship
models. Most of them were made in Vietnam. The shopkeeper explained
how they send them photos of boats and get these beautiful models in return.

A small section of the sailboats. They also had dozens, some huge,
of models of classic motoryachts.

Nice to get a mail from Graeme. Vasbyt. Not too many sleeps!