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Published: June 25th 2014
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We arrived in Meppel to a lock closed for lunch time but a very nice Dutch couple invited us to moor up with them. They had a 15 year old dog Bongo and their boat was 37 years old. He had been a harbour master in different places but now retired and gave Paul well received advice about getting to the Friesian Islands or not – the bottom line was, watch the weather, don’t mistime it, get the tides right – in fact behave as you would on the East Coast! He also told a story of crossing the Ijsselmeer on a calm day and having to return the next day to be home for work despite the conditions being rough with his wife saying at the end of the very bumpy passage “I am never going boating again”!! She seems to have rethought that as I must have been a few years ago.
Meppel is a charming little town harbour with 2 windmills, a pretty little classic Dutch lifting bridge and lock, and 2 what we thought were ocelots!! Yes in the house opposite where we moored were 2 – alive and active – full sized apparent ocelots in
the window!! In fact we have since googled them and think they are Savannah F1 hybrid cats which are crosses between Servals and siamese and banned in most countries. What you learn from a Schroeder blog!
Our friends were due to catch a plane at an unearthly hour the next day and then catch a train direct from Schiphol. So we cleaned the boat a little more and waited for the text that told us when the train would arrive so we would meet them. The first text said 1050. The next said – we have got on the wrong train we will let you know. The third text said the border guards are very nice and have found the right train for us and we will be there at 1145. We had a vision of them having got to Germany but the penultimate text was a bit of a wind up – in the event they had got on the right train – or it would have been right 6 months ago when the powers that be decided it would no longer stop at Meppel, but then neglected to tell anyone our friends had consulted! They didn’t get
to Germany but Assen before they caught a train back.
As this situation evolved we had another problem. Our Dutch friends had set off about an hour before, the lock gates had broken (the harbour master said – never happened before in his experience!) and they were stuck in the lock. The repair man had been sent for but the gates needed a new bit and no one knew where there was one. We wouldn’t be going anywhere quickly even when our visitors finally arrived!! So we met our friends at the station and informed them they may be having a weekend in Meppel!!At least they would know all about the trains or so we thought.
We had lunch, looked at the ocelots and were informed a man with a bit was on his way and in the end we got away at 1400. We went to Giethoorn which is a little like a real life Disney village, pretty, flowery, thatched cottages, which can only be viewed from the dinghy so that was an interesting introduction for them if not really typical of what we have seen so far. The next day we took off for a nearby
national park around Ossenzijl. It’s a little like our national parks where the houses are all quaint and pretty and presumably protected by the Dutch version of English Heritage. We moored on a bank almost completely isolated from others and walked into the village of Kalenburg and through some of the woods and reed beds. Many of the houses have flag poles and from some of them there are school bags hanging – we have noticed this in other places but this time we asked a nice waitress in the café (who complimented Heather on her English accent!) what they were doing there – it signifies the end of exams!!
Great amusement when we come across an open motor boat with 4 people in it, travelling round the many little rivers and canals when they came to a bridge only a metre high. The boat was probably 1.1m high so it took a lot of juggling and wriggling to even get the bow under and then there was a threat of the boat getting completely stuck. We offered to all get on board to push the boat down a bit but that offer was not taken up. I think
they wanted to prove the Dutch could do it on their own!
The next day we are off to ensure we got back to Meppel in good time for our friends to fight the good fight with the trains again. In Kalenburg we come across our first bruggeld this holiday – where the brug meester has a clog on the end of a fishing line in which he requires boats to put, this time, 2.10 Euro for the privilege of going through his bridge. We duly sent our friends forward. This day the weather has finally improved and we have a lovely trip back down little windy canals, big and middle sized very shallow lakes and finally a large canal. We were a little later than planned getting to a bridge that closed for lunch 6min before because we did a 360deg turn when coming to a post in a beautiful garden with a nest and storks on top of it – a photo opportunity not to be missed.
However we made Meppel in good time – only to find the lock repair man due to visit that afternoon so we couldn’t get out again until tomorrow…we had
thought maybe we would lose our visitors and take off to begin our journey to Naarden where we are going to leave the boat on Friday when we return to Laleham. But in the event, a shopping trip to replenish the fridge contents and a gentle afternoon before waiting for the joyous or despairing shouts and screams around the town as Holland won their next World Cup game.
We have enjoyed immensely having friends with us and being able to show them a tiny little cameo of the Dutch waterways – we hope they catch that plane all right and don’t end up in France, and we hope they thought it worthwhile making the journey.
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