A few more Doh! moments

Lots of aches and pains in the morning so I took a looonng hot shower which probably pissed off other campers since there was only one. Ah well.

We drove the back roads rather than take the motorway which was fine except the bazillion roundabouts J had to negotiate before giving up, and the fact that a key road was blocked along a long stretch so our satnav kept taking us to different points along the works. Eventually we used J's ipad to rescue us. It took half an hour to do a 10 minute stretch but was fine from there. Because of our backblocks route we crossed the border without realising until we noticed the different language signs.

There were some lovely looking houses like this one. The style has  a huge barn attached to the rear which you don't see well here. Certainly a wealthy area though.

New country, new language, new old architecture.

One other thing we didn't notice until too late was that all our fresh water had run out. It appears the safety valve had tripped at some point - low voltage and low temperature can do this though we're not sure which it was this time. Or maybe it had been open all the time we've had the vehicle and we've just not noticed? Anyway, we'll have to watch for it in future. Unfortunately, the valve is under all our food in the cupboard so we had to unpack all that, close the valve, then pack all the food back again. We've put installing a hand sized access flap on our to-do list.

Our ultimate target was Leer on the Ems in Germany. It's a nice town and  we are parked for free in a carpark.

5 official stands (with power) but about 15 vans in the car park.

This woman kept following me around with a cuppa. Embarrassing.

It turns our their stadtfest (city festival) is this weekend so their were 4 stages with music during the evening. My favourite was the aged rock band playing 70's and 80's rock, while J preferred a band playing more recent stuff. Town was busy, though the audiences were of a high average age.

On the walk home we saw an amazing sky. A confluence of cloud, full moon and solstice. Our cameras couldn't do it justice.

11pm, summer solstice

 That line is natural,not a crease in the photograph

 Midnight with full moon rising

 Awesome

More rain and other watersports

We walked into town to check it out. The outskirts are lovely with lakeside homes, and lots of green. The aforementioned cleanliness was spoilt by a chest-of-drawers that someone had biffed in the lake so I did my duty and fished it out. (It was gone the next day, and not back in the lake.)

Veendam centre, I'm sorry to say, was dead like an English town centre. Many shops were empty and there were lots of cheap shops the equivalent of Poundland. No charity shops though! J bought jars of sauces for 5c!!! And we didn't even get food poisoning from it.

J badgered me into giving the waterskiing a go. I feared multiple faceplants but managed to get on my skis second time around. Unfortunately, there were two tight corners to get used to so it took one spectacular (and rather bruising) crash and another less so to learn how to get around it. I was quite pleased when I did though. You are never too old to learn something new and I figure I'll wait a few decades then enter the veterans Olympics.

 Lessons: No jumps, get out of the way if you fall off, if you are in trouble let go of the rope!

 First time was a face-plant within 10 metres

 I'll wait until next time to wakeboard like the dude in the background.

 Pretending to hold my skis up rather than the other way around.

 Here goes - got around the trickiest corner...

 But not the next.

This is how it felt to get all the way around!

Between that crash and the aches from unaccustomed use of arm and back muscles I was rather sore that evening and on. Cool though,  eh?

Rain, with chances of storms.

We decided against going to Ameland as the Oesel music festival was on and streams of people were heading that way. It was a good decision to cancel in that it bucketed down the next day, with thunder and lightening to spice it up. Had we been cycling around a small island it may not have been fun, music or no  music!

Instead we headed east. I got severely told off for blocking the fietpad (bike path) at an intersection going around Groningen, so will have to be more careful. Reggie is longer than a car and his arse obviously got where it was not appreciated. We've renamed the place Groaningen.

We had lunch in a Lidl carpark - glamorous, eh? The beauty of Reggie is that ability to stop anywhere for a cuppa/snooze/loo stop/whatever. As we were avoiding motroways we ended up on some winding country roads so our progress is not fast. But what's the hurry?

Friesians taken on the moove

A common sight in this part of the world.

Our camp was a park on the side of a lake in Veendam. It is peat land and many of the lakes have been formed by the digging of peat. We arrived to a half full park but several MHs arrived after us.

Veendam seems pleasant enough. We had a stroll around the park, then sat and had a beer while watcheing people waterboarding/waterskiing on a zip line. It looked like fun. More rain followed though, bringing at least one mosquito. I could see the little bugger flying around during the evening but couldn't catch it. It caught me though - twice. And it stopped me sleeping with it's zzziid, zziid in my ear. But I belatedly caught up with the mothersucker,and it died in a Tarantinoesque pool of (my) blood in the morning!



Showerometer: 15

Hoi hoi

Harlingen was our next stop as we thought we might take a day trip to one of the Wadden Islands, the chain of islands that runs along the north the Netherlands and Germany. The site was on the waterfront, right next to a fish factory, but handy for town. (The fishy smell only bothered me a couple times and we got used to the noise from the refridgerators...)

Just to keep in practice here's a then and now:

The town had a wealthy feel to it, and like all Dutch towns we've visited it was remarkably litter and graffiti free. We've not had a truly representative experience I know, but it is quite noticeable. The citizens all great each other with "hoi hoi" so we've taken that up.

We wandered the streets until we came across a gathering of people. It was a Lanenkaatsen tournament and it seemed every citizen of Harlingen was there, either playing or watching. You all know how to play Lanenkaatsen so I won't bore you with the rules. The game we watched was quite tight with the red team just sneaking in by a kaatsen or two at the end. We left with plenty of games left to play and the rest of town was like a ghost town. We felt sorry for two kids we saw kicking a ball around as they had obviously forgotten where they were supposed to be. Losers.

 Let battle commence!

 This young lady had an off day with her serving so was near to tears at times.

The young lady facing us also started badly but picked up her game and scored some winners.

This bloke was 25 when he started explaining the rules to us.

Rolling the Dikes

Leaving Naarden we headed across the Markerwaardijk. At the end of it is another quaint harbour town - Enkhuizen - so we stopped for a look around. There were lots of sailing schooners in the port which adds to its 'ye olde' appeal, and they are hired out for groups to tour the Ijsselmeer and/or Markermeer.

The south-east end of the Markerwaardijk, where we nearly went for a swim.

The middle bit

Enkhuizen (N-W end of dike)

Testing of the new amphibious Renault did not start well

We wandered around a bit but decided not to stay so headed up and over the Afsluitdijk just to see this piece of engineering. It was built in the 1930s but is being updated and strengthened now. Amazing to think it closes in such a large part of what is effectively the North Sea! Just before the start of the dike we hit a milestone  (or should that be a kilometre stone?) - 1000 km in our motorhome from point of purchase. I should have made note of how far in Europe, but hey ho. 1000 km and everything seems to be going swimmingly so far...

 1024 km of Reggie-time

The middle of the Afsluikdijk

We were aiming for a particular campsite but got redirected by roadworks. Rather than do a big loop we found an alternative and stopped just below the sea dike in Zurich near Harlingen. No facilities but only €5.25 for the night and a great view of the setting sun.

Zurich

Naarden, Naarden, what's going on 'ere den?

We cycled into Naarden to have a look around. It's one of the best preserved Vauban fortresses in Europe and is a nice little town to boot.

A model of the town

The real thing

The arsenal and a car

Stadhuis

Stadchairs

Another chair

A statue

There was also a photography festival in town which I was interested in seeing. As usual some strike you more than others. One artist had photos of people's interiors,  and I found the range fascinating. One was a shack and still covered in dust and cobwebs. Another was a simple room with a bench-table and a chair,  nothing else. What a contrast. You were supposed to listen to the owners talking about the rooms but it was only in Dutch.

Another massive drive

Woken by the birdsong at 10am we had breakfast then popped over to say goodbye to Karel. A few "one more thing" moments later and we were on the road by 3pm.

We've headed for Naarden,  an old Vauban fortress on the edge of the Ijsselmeer. We found a site in a marina which is lovely but one of the more expensive places so far. We very nearly had a disaster on the way when I started to fill the tank with petrol (I blame language barriers, not my stupidity). Fortunately I only put in a squeeze before realising something was wrong, and the full tank of diesel that followed should dilute it enough not to be a problem.

By good fortune there was a jazz festival on when we arrived and the sun also came out so we had a pleasant evening having a drink and listening to music.

A strawberry moon apparently

Something odd in my blog statistics:

What's going on there, eh?

Showerometer rating 19.