FINALLY WE MADE IT

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Windmills - what windmills? So we arrive in this little tiny harbour in a place called Alblasserdam – you try saying that to the ferry lady - with the intention of going to see 16 famous windmills by using our legs and pedalling. Instead the nice havenmeester says that there is a SPECTACLE in Dordrecht, just a 15min ferry ride away – so off we go. The sun comes out and we zoom down the very large waterway in a Waterbus going we reckoned at 30kt. It is a steam Spectacle and spectacular it is – most of the engines – steam engines (full size and miniature), steam pumping things, fairground steam generators, steam dredging things, boats, and you name it seemed to come from the UK but it was a very impressive show – apparently the biggest in Europe. Paul was in his element but Heather felt sorry that he didn’t have another nerd (Paul is not a nerd – ed) with him to revel in all the technicalities. The windmills will have to wait until another time.

The next day was scheduled to be the return to our “home port”, Drimmelen, which ran the risk of feeling that we were both going over old ground (we do like going to new places) and also bringing part of the holiday to a close. In the event the day dawned bright and sunny and stayed that way all day. We found a new route back, having taken some advice from the nice havenmeester who said – yes of course you must go to the Biesbosch and no you won’t get stuck. We had already tried twice before on our previous trip to get to the Biesbosch which is a very large national park, closed to all commercial traffic and things like jet skis (shouldn’t everything be) but is very shallow and there are no nice buoys to show you where to go. But we went and we tiptoed our way in and found a spot to anchor for lunch in the sunshine (the only thing you could hear were cuckoos) and then tiptoed out again. The depths ranged from grounding and yes Heather was steering, to about 6m with not a lot of notice of changes between each. On the way out we had just complimented ourselves on making it when we went from 4m to 0.1 in about 10 secs…good job we were going slowly.



And so back to Drimmelen where we were given a lovely welcome back by the havenmeester and cleaning cloths were handed out by the crew as the crew got down to polishing poor Isabela – she has done us well but already needs a bit of care. We have done 200 miles in 2 weeks and stayed in 12 places only 2 of which including Drimmelen have we stayed in before. We go home for 2 weeks on Tuesday – work and gardening and sailing club beckon, oh and of course the cat! and then back for 3-4 weeks with the intention of moving northwards and moving our home port. More to report then I am sure.

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