This weekend we stayed on the Workum area. On Saturday we came across a Canal Vaulting competition in a nearby village and on Sunday we went to the beach. What a great weekend. The weather was perfect too. Saturday 17 June - Canal Vaulting On Saturday we decided to go for a small cycle. We thought a total of about 10kms would be enough for me. So we chose a road that looked like it went past a couple of windmills and headed off. The town we headed for was called “It Heidenskip”, which we thought might be “hide and seek” but was actually “the Heath”. One of the windmills was under repair, and the other had no building – it was just a canal-side pump. When we got to the little town though we found that there was a canal jumping competition going on. This was intriguing and we sat and watched it with the crowd for a while. It was called fierljeppen, which seems to be Frisian for vaulting. It seemed the Ik Heidenskip has a permanent canal jumping course, with three jumps each set up for a different length A- men’s, B – boys and C- women and girls. It was fun to watch and obviously required a lot of strength, balance, speed and agility. Basically the contestants had to use a pole to cross a canal. After preparing their pole, they had a run up of about 10 metres, then the jumped onto their pole, scrambled as high as they could up the pole as it swayed over the canal with their momentum, and then jumped off onto the sand on the other side of the canal, to try and get the longest distance. Some of course ended in the canal. Getting you pole to travel straight rather than go off at an angle seemed to be important to get the maximum distance. There was a crew of people supporting. Each jump had a person whose job it was to position ad hold the pole where the contestant wanted it. Also someone would follow the jumper in their run-up – to pull the pole back via a rope. Then there were people to measure the distances, and rake the sand. And of course an announcer as well. Somewhere there were scorers too, as there was an electronic reading of people’s scores. The maximum we saw was 16.1 m, but the record was 21m. Pretty impressive. We had a delightful afternoon watching this, before cycling back home. Sunday 19th June - Beach On Sunday afternoon we cycled down to the beach. It was a very still day so no kite surfers were out. Usually it is packed with them. Even so there was some kind of festival on "Hooked". And due to the lovely weather the beach was very busy. The water was not clear by Australian standards, and the water wasn't deep. We didn't see anyone get out far enough to actually swim. But it was nice to g for a wade (I cannot swim anyway with my cast), and have a lie on the sandy beach. Even though it is a freshwater lake there are shells and sand from it's days as the Zuidersee. I didn't take my camera, but got a few iphone snaps. There was a competition being run to see who could do the most loops on the swing. The boots were attached to the seat and you were strapped in in case of accidents. I watched this guy who did 50 loops - a record. I caught the end of his run as he was going backwards on iphone video. In the evening we went out for dinner. A lovely end to a great weekend.
1 Comment
Ian
19/6/2017 01:31:28 pm
What fun! Two activities I've never really imagined.
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