days more. Temperatures in the high 20s and clear blue skies and very little
wind except for the odd afternoon breeze.
We spend the week shopping. We bought necessary chandlery items for the
boat, a bicycle (more on that later) and lots of food, wine, beer, mineral
water and other heavy items that will be a pain to cart to the boat in the
coming days. Most of the repairs were completed but new batteries still need
to be installed and the gas detector and gas heater need to be fixed. That
should happen this coming week.
We did most of our shopping in Heerenveen. There are no big supermarkets in
Holland as the Dutch are not in favour of out of town large supermarkets but
prefer to keep smaller shops in the main streets. So it was always a long
time finding a parking place and getting the stuff back into the car. We did
find an Aldi supermarket which was very cheap but had a very limited range.
On Friday I had to return the hire car to Heerenveen so I decided to take
the bike with me and bike back - a distance of 26km in the very hot
afternoon. The Dutch have a great system of cycle paths mostly not following
the roads but taking direct paths across fields and along rivers and canals.
I biked back along one such system of paths through a lovely nature reserve
on the paved 1m wide cycle path. It was very pretty and much quicker and
safer than following the roads. I was exhausted when i got back but a cold
drink soon revived me and we decided to head out from the marina and moor on
the canal beside a lovely meadow so that Wendy could get used to the boat
and to mooring it up.
The next day we left early and passed through lake after lake before
arriving at Sloten. Sloten is an old walled town with a windmill (see
picture) that by chance has its annual free open day that day. We had a tour
around it and a went back to the boat and fired up the Cobb BBQ we had
bought to roast a whole chicken. 90 minutes later with no smoke, no flames
and no hassle we sat down to a lovely roast chicken dinner complete with
roast potatoes, broccoli and carrots. (See picture) Delicious. The BBQ can
also do scones, pizzas etc but we do have an electric oven for those sort of
things. A lovely Riesling from Alsace went well with it.
Today is Sunday and we have continued travelling through more lakes (meers)
with hundreds and hundreds of boats out for the day as it is a long weekend
this weekend in The Netherlands. We had to continually alter course to avoid
sailing boats tacking up wind in the narrow channels between the lakes.
There were huge old sailing boats on the lakes, power boats, canoeists, and
yachts all jostling for the breeze and a path through the mayhem.
Eventually we arrived at our destination in Oudega. There we found a quiet
mooring nestled on the edge of a large meer (but sheltered from the
afternoon sea breeze) and pottered around with the myriad of small things
still to be done. It was a glorious evening and we enjoyed sitting outside
in the warn evening sun with aglass of wine watching the yachts sailing all
around us.
This week we head back to the boat yard for them to finish off the repairs
before hopefully leaving for Germany next Saturday.
