May 12 and 13 Our original plan had been to go and moor wild somewhere in the National Park De Weeribben, but as we hadn’t been able to get electricity the night before, we decided to only head to Blokzijl instead, and then recharge the batteries fully. We set off and it was mild but rainy on and off. We got to Blokzijl and moored in the lovely harbor (having asked a guy in his yacht to move a couple of metres to give us room). But we need 12 amps to be able to take power and the shore power kept tripping at that current, so we were unable to charge the batteries at all. We took the bikes out and did a little tour of this delightful town, and then had lunch locally. As we were a bit concerned about power we decided to head off aiming for Ossenzijl, where we hoped to be able to take on power, as well as recharge the batteries with the engine as we went along. The trip was quite pretty, especially through the towns of Wettering and Kalenburg. There houses gardens are right down to the water. We were barked at by many dogs and watched the robot lawn mowers keep the lawns in immaculate condition – just the thing for a holiday house I thought. Both these towns are in or near the National Park and must be very busy in summer. The route through Kalenburg was lovely but tricky. A narrow winding canal in a 21m long barge was quite a challenge, so when we reached the end of the houses, I suggested that we pull up and go to one of the local restaurants for tea (to save power). So we pulled up and looked at our options. Our batteries had come up to 75 percent, and it was now sunny so in the end we moored there and had an omelet and salad for tea. The weather was now bright and sunny and it was delightful sitting out on the back deck for dinner for the second night in a row. About 11pm that night we had a spectacular thunderstorm come over us. Lightening flashing almost continuously. But the thunder was never very loud, so I don’t think the centre of the storm was ever directly over us. Good to know the boat can handle some serious weather though. In the morning Howard had a fish and I went for a walk through the town. I had been concentrating in driving so much I hadn’t had a chance to appreciate it the night before. The batteries were at 60 percent in the morning, so we thought we’d be OK as long as we could get power in Ossenzijl. I called ahead to book a mooring and confirm that they had power- I thought we’d get there about 3-4pm. The weather report predicted bad weather later in the day so we decided to hire a little whisper boat from the local café for a trip into the National Park de Weerribben. The outboard engines were electric and so were very quiet. We had a pleasant couple of hours following a route through the marshes and bogs. One of the bridges we went under was so low we had to sit in the base of the boat to get low enough to get under it. This was not a wilderness area, but seemed to be heavily formed by man. We worked out that they harvested the reeds for thatch. We passed a couple of tractors being towed out on working barges. After a coffee we returned to the barge and spoke to a passing Dutchman who was walking around the old Zuiderzee. We hadn’t realized that we were still on the border of the old sea. The polder here was developed in the 1930’s so is a little older than that in Lelystad.
1 Comment
Neil and Margaret
17/5/2017 12:41:34 am
Photos unbelievable and beautiful. So sorry about the broken arm.
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