Gridlock on the canal

It was an extremely busy day on the canal: it seemed as if every Dutch person with a cabin cruiser - or indeed sail boat - was heading somewhere for their holidays, with a few commercial barges adding to the mixture. We were delayed right from the start but finally went through the first bridge. We enjoyed cruising through the outskirts of town: there seems to be a boat for every house:

Along the way we saw a couple of people reaching into the canal with a pole, then calling and waving to us frantically. At first we feared someone in the water but it turned out to be a seat cushion and we were able to nudge it back to the bank so they could retrieve it. They were extravagantly grateful:

We spotted an unusual thatched cottage – not a material much used here any more, as in England I think, also a converted water tower, which must have a fine view from the top.

Then we hit the mega traffic jam, with a swing bridge temporarily out of action in the middle of the small town of Alphem. There were more than a dozen boats queuing when we got there and many more came up behind.

The situation, already tricky with a blustery wind - lots of whirring bow-thrusters - was further confused by the arrival of this fellow, who naturally felt he should take precedence over everyone else: might is right, after all!

But eventually we got through and made our way to Gouda, famous for its cheeses and stained glass windows – well, everyone has to be famous for something. Didn’t Andy Warhol say that? As in many of these Dutch towns, the city hall is located right in the middle of the market square:

At its height apparently more than a thousand farmers would come to the square to sell their cheeses. Not so many these days, and certainly not on a Monday. Anyway, across the square we found the cheese museum, with a nice bas relief of the cheese weighing process:

And naturally we bought some good unpasteurized cheese to replenish our supplies, before pausing for a beer, and then heading for the cathedral, which is dedicated to John the Baptist and has an amazing series of 16^th stained glass windows telling his life story. They are indeed very fine, the faces in particular. Here he is at the end of his life:

And we could resist a last glimpse of Jesus on his way to heaven.

Not sure how far we will go tomorrow – depends a bit on the weather. The CNN 10-day forecast is not too reassuring, varying from rain to showers to cloudy to thunder storms to more rain. However the lady in the cheese museum said it would be sunny on Wednesday. We will see. And we are not complaining – we did, after all, come north to avoid the great Mediterranean heatwave.