On the road again

Marnemoende to Wageningen

First of all, apologies for all the confusion yesterday about the link to this blog – e-mails flying around and compounding the confusion. But the good news is that we have had our first comment, so that obviously works at least.

We got away at about 10 a.m. after doing various chores and parking the car in the hangar where Saskia spent the winter. We had woken to sunshine streaming into the cabin, but sharp showers followed and recurred regularly through the morning. Undaunted, we set off through Ijsselstein and our first lifting bridge of the year:

Soon enough there were some pretty canal views, much nicer than exploring by car:

After a while we turned onto the enormous commercial Amsterdam-Rhine canal, with big boys for company – here’s Esperanto overtaking with hundreds of tons of coal for cargo:

And we enjoyed seeing her pass by the wind turbines – past and future perhaps: 

There were more luxurious vessels on the canal too – how the other half lives! All the same, the two or three cruise ships we saw all seemed to be half empty – a sign of the (economic) times I suppose.

Anyway, here we are in our first big commercial lock:

After a while we turned onto the Neder Rhine, and encountered a fierce current. We stopped for lunch as soon as we could:

And then ploughed on upstream, very slowly.  It was taking so long that we thought of stopping at Rhenem, short of Wageningen, but one sight of the port was quite enough. In fact, I’m surprised there was even one customer. The noise of the funfair was deafening, even across the river.

So we came on to Wageningen after all, arriving about 6.30, and tied up on the fuel dock, which is probably verboten, but no staff here to chase us off. Tomorrow to Arnhem.