This day has been a long time in the planning!!
For those of you who have followed our blogs over the years, you will be well acquainted with our very dear friends Wolfgang and Marlene. A brief recap on our joined history. We met them in 2016 on the UK canals in the early stages of our four month canal boating odyssey with our two little dogs Maples and Toques. It followed that we hired their beautiful boat Ange de L’Eau three times over the follow years as well as hiring other canal boats with them in the south of Wales and Scotland. We also visited them in their hometown of Bremen in Northern Germany.
They sold their beloved canal boat in September 2022 and then bought Old Gilly which is a Dutch cruiser from the Netherlands. They have been cruising the inland waterways of Europe since.
Ali very kindly dropped us off at the preselected location where Wolfgang and Marlene had moored which was a 25 minutes drive from Hilversum at a town called Weesp. Very conveniently it was right across the road from a coffee shop!!
We quickly loaded all our stuff and then headed out onto the waterways.
It is truly hard to describe just how perfect our surroundings are – real chocolate box stuff.
We always said that the only way to see the true beauty of the English countryside was to do it by canal boat and it is certainly the same for the Netherlands.
Whereas in the UK, bridges, locks are all manual and you do them yourself, here they are manned. They are also much sturdier constructions and complex in operation.
Our first windmills and surprisingly there are many and in excellent working condition. Wolfgang always had this tradition on the English canals, that when he made the summit of a canal he would have a schnapps to celebrate. We are trying to come up with a similar tradition for the Netherlands but of course with it being so flat, that is not going to work. Suggestions to date are, each time we pass under a bridge – hmmm, we will be drunk by 10.00am, or, each time we see a windmill. We think that idea isn’t going to fly either. Thinking caps need to go back on.
We cruised for a few hours and then pulled in for the night. We wandered into a small village to purchase some food supplies for the next few days. The fridge on Old Gilly is very small so you need to purchase limited amounts of food on a frequent basis.
We spent what was remaining of the evening catching up on the last three years since we last saw one another and of course playing games. We fitted back into our friendship like you put on a pair of your beloved old winter gloves.
Steps 6,280
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