What's in a name?

Strolling along the dock this morning while the water tank filled, I came across yet another boat called Carpe Diem. When I saw the first back in 2002, when bringing Saskia down from the Somme to Burgundy with Gary and Liam, I thought it a clever name. Since then I must have seen anything from six to a dozen every year. Obviously others think it clever too. On the other hand, we have rarely seen another Saskia – though one, a tug, passed us speedily going in the other direction a couple of days ago.

Anyway, the sun was struggling to appear this morning, so we hung the washing out on the rail and set off. Quickly we arrived at Roermond and the surrounding lakes, which we took a tour around. We were pleased to come across a waterside filling station, and topped up the diesel tank, which was below half. However it was not really swimming weather, as we had hoped, and there was no sign of any of the thousands of campers taking to the water

Then we moored up in a tributary river called the Weerd close to the centre of Roermond …

… and tried to visit the St Christopher cathedral, but sadly it wasn’t going to open until 2 p.m., so we went to the square for a coffee. The town hall dominates the square, and is very handsome:

And you get a good view of the cathedral too.

At 11 a.m., the bells in the clock tower played a merry tune for about five minutes, while a procession of characters circled the cupola. Very quaint! Street scenes were fun:

We were intrigued while cruising around Roermond to come across black swans. I had thought they were an exotic import from Australia, reserved for the moats of snooty English aristos (or MPs perhaps), but apparently not. This one, and a partner, appeared for a handout when we stopped for lunch a bit north of Roermond.

After lunch we headed for Venlo, where we are moored tonight. The high point of the afternoon was spotting our first authentic Dutch windmill – I expect there will be plenty more, almost as many as castles on the Rhine!

The municipal mooring in Venlo is dominated by this character – not sure why.