Stepping out to Meppel

Hattem to Meppel, July 7

Our nice free mooring on the quayside at Hattem didn't last long. Shortly after posting last night, we were informed that the quay was for work boats only, and that if we didn't move into the marina, we would be fined 90 euros. So we moved, and paid the marina 17 euros instead for berth, though that did include electricity and water and free WiFi, so I suppose it wasn't bad value.

This morning we set off punctually, swanning rapidly down the river for a couple of miles or so before turning off towards Meppel. There was a lock to negotiate, with a 25-minute wait, and rather surprisingly it dropped us about a metre, rather than lifting us up. I remember being similarly surprised once on the Rhine a few years ago. Anyway, we decided to stop at Zwolle to look around, since it was also one of the important Hanseatic cities. We negotiated a couple of lifting bridges and found a convenient mooring. The city was worth the visit. Here's the former watchmen's guard house in the main market square:

We ventured into the church behind, and found it no longer functions as such but was setting up the exhibits for an art competition. We looked around but were not enormously impressed.

The streets were bustling with many, many bars, cafes and restaurants, including, apparently, a 3-star Michelin place that sets you back about 160 euro a head. We didn't bother looking for it!

We passed this fountain with the basin full of foam, as if someone had emptied a packet of detergent into it. Curious:

Outside the City Hall there is a magnificent bronze of Adam by Rodin, which we greatly admired.

A wedding party was emerging and we were amused to see everyone blowing bubbles rather than throwing confetti or rice. Charming, and cleaner too.

After all that excitement, we made our way to the edge of town to see the well-preserved south gate:

We enjoyed a refreshing beer in the market square before returning to the boat and then decided to have an early lunch before setting off. We had just finished when we heard the bells going for the lifting bridge so we made a rapid exit, and cleared both bridges without any delay. Then it was an easy run up to Meppel, which was a distinct disappointment. Though its absence from the tourist guide book should perhaps have warned us. Very industrial, lots of barges, factories and silos. We pressed on though the town to where the map said there was a marina: there was, but virtually deserted. Only about three boats, though place for hundreds.

We located an office where they explained that the port was officially closed: They had only bought it two weeks ago and had not had time to put it in order, but it was OK for us to stay, though no water and electricity, of course. So here's Saskia in solitary splendour at the end of the harbour:

Onward and downward

Zutphen to Hattem

We set off in better weather to explore the town, one of the Hanseatic League of self-governing cities, along with Deventer (passing through later), Zwolle and others. They formed a kind of primitive EU, with trade protection and reasonable cooperation, until superseded, I suppose, by the nation states, particularly Sweden, Denmark, etc. An important feature of Zutphen is the remnants of its protective walls:

It is reckoned to have one of the best preserved mediaeval centres of town in the Netherlands, and was certainly most attractive.

We came across a church, now deconsecrated and turned into a library, with a pleasant flower garden containing this reminder of events not so very long ago:

The town hall is imposing and has a very attractive chime of bells every quarter – not too loud but very tuneful:

Our main target was the Church of St. Walpurga, which didn't open till 10.30. It started off as a Romanesque church in the 11th century, but was much changed over the centuries, including the addition of a unique public library in the 16th century. We admired this spectacular 17th/18th century organ, which was being played as we visited:

Then we were able to get a personal guided tour of the "new" library, opened in 1564 and preserved as it was ever since. Zutphen was not a university town, so this is no Bodleian, but the burghers were well educated, and tended to donate their book collections to the library, where named individuals, about 55, were given keys to unlock the chained books and could come and browse. Initially the idea was to provide an information centre to counter the "evil" propaganda of the Reformation, but soon other influences crept in, and Luther, Erasmus and others appeared. After the Spanish were chased out in 1591, the Dutch Reformed Church took over, and has remained ever since. It was exciting to see original Gutenburg books, and just as much, school books with the original students' notes.

After that we hurried back to the boat to meet the noon deadline for departure. We headed back down the Ijssel, still running pretty fast so that we were covering the ground at 12 kph or more. (The GPS is back in action after some communication with the helpdesk. It seems that upgrading to Windows 10 had blocked it. Thanks Bill!) We paused for lunch at Deventer, where Diana embarked on an urgent translation that kept her busy all afternoon, and finally pulled into the port of Hattem for the night, where we are on a quayside largely populated by tugboats:

Tomorrow we turn off the river, passing Zwolle and Zwartluis en route to Meppel.

Culture and public transport

Zutphen

It was a grey, damp morning, more suited to culture than boating. Though what we hadn't realized was just how long it would take to reach the museum by public transport. First an easy 10-minute stroll to the station, then a 20-minute wait for a 20-minute train ride to Apeldoorn, then a cold and damp 25-minute wait for a 30-minute bus ride to Otterloo, where there was thankfully a connecting bus into the national park to about 200 metres from the museum entrance. On the credit side, we did discover from the first bus driver that we could buy 65+ cards, which gave us unlimited bus travel all day for just 1.50 euro – quite a bargain!

So we staggered in a bit after noon, and this genial character, Maitre Jacques apparently, was the first to greet us:

We agreed we were hungry and needed sustenance before tackling the art, so we headed for the self-service restaurant for a salady lunch, accompanied by Van Gogh wine, which turned out to be not at all bad. We admired their system for keeping small children amused:

Then it was time for the serious stuff. The collection, which was assembled by Mr Kroller and Mme Muller, who was the one with the money, is extremely impressive. She had a particular thing for Van Gogh, and bought about 90 of his paintings, of which they put 40 or so on show at any one time, rotating from time to time. The show was much more enjoyable, and less crowded, than the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, which we struggled with last summer. But before we reached the Van Goghs, there were examples of other Impressionists and post-Impressionists: Monet, Pissaro, Seurat, Sisley, Renoir et al. We liked this portrait of Mata Hari, the (in)famous WWI spy, by Israels:

I would never have taken this portrait of a violin-playing clown to be a work by Renoir without the signature:

Then it was on to the Van Goghs, the heart of the museum. They have many of his rather dark early works. Others cover his time Paris and later Arles where he discovered Mediterranean light. Here are just a few examples:

Moving on, there are good Picassos and a Bracque, and also paintings by Leger like this:

Outside there is a sculpture garden, which we explored between rain showers, liking this floating number spinning in the wind:

After a while aching backs and sore feet persuaded us to call it a day, so we headed for the bus stop, though Diana decided to borrow one of the free-to-use white bikes to cycle to the next stop, by the park entrance. Either way it was another half-hour wait, but the connection was good at Otterloo, and we arrived at Apeldoorn station with two minutes to spare for the train back to Zutphen. The weather had cheered up a bit, so Diana took some photos as we sought out a butcher and fruit and veg place for essential supplies:

Tomorrow we plan to stroll around the town a bit more, and then head on up the river. Not sure how far we'll get.

Dancing down the Ijssel

Arnhem to Zutphen

We set off early to walk to the station and catch a bus to Oosterbeek, where the Airborne Museum is housed in the the very building that was General Urquhart's headquarters during the Battle of Arnhem:

Outside they have a contemporary photo of him standing in front of the building. You can see why they cast Sean Connery in the role in the film:

We were delighted to see a party of Dutch schoolchildren getting a dramatic account of the events of 1944. It was clear from the introductory video that the local people still greatly care about what happened in their city 72 years ago, and annually honour the dead in the war cemetery in Oosterbeek. 

The exhibition was both interesting and harrowing in parts. Plenty of historic photos, together with uniforms, guns, bombs etc. In the basement, three levels down, there was an extraordinary reconstruction of the battle. The scenes were peopled by life-sized models and made more terrifying by sound and light effects. Almost impossible to photograph, even with a flash, but Diana caught this one:

On our way back from the museum, we tried to photo a splendid scene glimpsed on the way out: a farmer had planted two large parasol umbrellas in his field, and a couple of cows were enjoying the shade beneath. However, the bus was going too fast and the cows had moved. So its left to the imagination.

After a glass of wine and an early lunch back at the boat, we set off, still upstream and it was slow going for the first hour. We had time to enjoy this houseboat: it looked as if the owner had an expanding family!

Eventually we reached the point where the Ijssel river branches off from the Neder Rhine, turned the corner, and suddenly we were dancing downstream at about 15 kph, throttled well back and letting the current work for us for a change.

We did discover that the winding Ijssel encourages blue-boarding (described in our Rhine blog a couple of years back). For the uninitiated, if a barge coming upstream wants to cross to the "wrong" side of the river, to use the slacker current on the inside of a bend for example, he hangs a square blue board on the right (starboard) side of his wheelhouse. Anyone coming downstream has to move over smartly to their "wrong" side. The process is always a little fraught since you are travelling so fast downstream in these conditions. Anyway, here are a couple of blue-boarders we met this afternoon:

The river is running fast and the water level is high, though you can see it has been higher. This tree seemed somewhat marooned:

We pulled into a charming and welcoming harbour near the centre of the Hanseatic town of Zutphen at about 5 p.m.

Tomorrow the idea is to take the train to the famous Kroller-Muller Museum in the morning, then explore Zutphen in the afternoon and stay here a second night. With electricity and water paid for, the washing machine is already running!

A bridge (not) too far

Wageningen to Arnhem

We survived the night without being chased off the fuel dock, and in fact the harbour-master, when he arrived at 8.30, turned out to be a charming retired diplomat working as a volunteer for the yacht club. He wasn't at all cross and sold us some diesel before we left. Like almost all Dutch people we met, he spoke immaculate English. In fact, I forgot to mention yesterday one lock-keeper, when asked on the radio whether he spoke English, replied: "Enough to keep out of trouble."

So it was back onto the Rhine, and the current was still strong, though surprisingly we managed to pass one fellow sufferer who was progressing even more slowly than us.

After a while we arrived at the Driel visor weir, which was open so we didn't have to go through the parallel lock. The pictures below give an idea of the scale of the thing, which was built in 1972 to control the water level in the river, and make sure that enough water goes down the Ijssel (which we will be navigating from tomorrow).

The two semicircular barriers can be lowered into the water like the visor on the helmet of a medieval knight. Here is a link to an aerial shot we found on the internet of the barrage in the lowered position:

http://siebeswart.photoshelter.com/image/I0000smDQYykaP2Y

At lunch time we arrived at Arnhem, and moored up on the quayside just below the John Frost Bridge, the famous Bridge Too Far, for those old enough to have seen the film (with Anthony Hopkins as Frost and Sean Connery as Maj. Gen. Urquhart):

The Battle of Arnhem, Operation Market Garden, which took place in the autumn of 1944 and primarily involved the British First Airborne Division, was intended to capture the Rhine bridge in order to shorten the war and liberate northern Holland, Instead, it turned out to be the last major British defeat of WWII, with many, many casualties. Here is a historic shot of the bridge after it was destroyed:

Apparently only 190 houses still stood in Arnhem after the battle, but the town has been rebuilt and is thriving and bustling today, with some handsome restored buildings:

There were lots of people out doing their shopping, with the sales on in most shops, or else sitting around in cafes enjoying the sunshine, which has been rather scarce this year:

When we eventually succumbed to the temptation of a cold beer, this was the pleasant view from our cafe table:

Heading back to the boat, we found a church that has installed a glass elevator in its tower. The elevator whisks you up 73 metres to the top of the tower for panoramic views of the town and the surrounding country. Here's that bridge again:

Tomorrow we plan to make a foray to the Airborne Museum, which is about five kilometres away, then set off and turn north onto the River Ijssel. We will stop at one of the towns there so that on Tuesday we can visit the famous Kroller-Muller Museum, which has lots of Van Goghs.

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.

Saskia is back in commission

Marnemoende, Ijsselstein, Netherlands

After 10 months absence, we are finally back on board and getting set to head off to northern Holland tomorrow. To set the scene, here is a map of the area we plan to explore:

We will be heading first across to Arnhem, then north to Groningen, across west to Leeuwarden, then south through Friesland, Giethorn (where I bought Saskia in 1999), Meppel, Zwolle and others, eventually to Nijmegen (we hope) and on south towards Belgium and France. We plan to be in Paris for a few days in early August, and then we’ll head down through the Burgundy Canal aiming to get back to Saint Jean de Losne by the end of the month.

We came up yesterday by car, after considering alternative possibilities – train or plane. But really, with so much stuff to bring with us, it seemed best, even though it will mean a certain amount of toing and froing to get the car and ourselves back to St Jean at the same time. The journey was always going to be long – about 12 hours, and it was made longer when after a couple of hours, still south of Lyon, we rather dramatically blew out a front tyre – travelling at about 130 kph and overtaking someone. Big surprise, and rather alarming, but the car kept straight and we made it safely to the hard shoulder, whence we were eventually rescued. The garage was painfully slow in changing the tyre – and understaffed – but eventually we got going again, and after that it was plain sailing, though we didn’t reach the boat until about 9.30pm.

We had considered stopping at a hotel, but were glad to get here and found Saskia in great shape: shiny in her new coat of paint, as you can see. She was clean and warm inside after wintering in the heated dry store. Well worth the extra cost. Also good to get the new flag flying again, especially in these troubled times.

Today, as well as getting unpacked and everything stowed away, we made a shopping foray to Utrecht – rather different by car than boat! – and also Ijsselstein, to get set up for our online communications, which seem to be working.

By the way, for those who may have been frustrated before, I have tried to get the blog set up so you can comment. At the foot of each post it probably says ‘no comments’ or maybe one or two. Anyway, you should click on the word comment, and that should let you say your piece.