Zwartsluis has won our award for the friendliest, most helpful people in our Netherlands travel. It is also the place where we discovered the problems with our shower and started the large task of fixing it.
Coincidentally, today, 15 days later, the shower and tiling and shower base plus plumbing are all fixed and back together. Now we can have real showers again instead of using the bath. Hooray! From this, the mathematicians among you will have calculated that we are 15days behind with the blogs. This is true, but we are rapidly catching up. Most of them are written but the editting and adding photos takes time and now the shower is complete, we have more free time.
Traversing the Randmeren (76km stretch of lakes)
To reach Zwartsluis via Kettelmeer and Zwarte Meer, (Meers are lakes) both significant bodies of water but in many places very shallow, we needed to dust off our navigational skills for the first time in Europe: to interpret cardinal marks, to check off the numbering on the port and starboard markers so that we turned at the right time to enter a particular channel; to use the binoculars on quite a foggy day to look ahead to identify a change of direction; and to avoid windsurfers and para gliders operating across our path.
Water activities on the Randmeren
All went well and we turned into Zwartsluis and found a mooring at the town quay. The harbour is full of old Dutch boats so we felt quite at home with our neighbours.
Zwartsluis
Zwartsluis
The lady in the tourist bureau was very helpful in telling us about the town, including the supermarket; the harbourmaster went out of his way to give us extra information about a particular card to which we are entitled as an historic ship; the chandler was very informative about places to go for the bits and pieces David needed to fix the shower up and get new oil filters; the oil filter man gave us a most useful document in English about the tourist towns in the area. People in the street and at the quay were very friendly and chatty, so we came away feeling a bit more positive about visiting the Netherlands.
As we left the town was setting up a barge just near us as the stage for a performance that night of "Water Music", including several town bands and some well- known singers. The stage was being decorated with branches and sunflowers, the sound and lighting men were sorting everything out and altogether it was a busy scene but sadly we had to leave to make room for them, so could not be part of it. The stage was actually a large flat barge that was pushed into position right next to us- so some people had to leave evern earlier than we did.
The town had a small and quaint museum. It was more a group of collections donated by people. There was the workshop and samples from a clog maker who worked there for many years. They also had a workshop and samples from leather workers. There was a stuffed animal collection.
Clogs from birth (right clog) to death (left clog)
Best Regards,
Penny and Dave
Setting up for the concert