In de Hoef. We stayed here three days. and this was our view. Well the cow was not always on the bridge. Sometimes there were more of them too.
De Hoef, watercolor
Gary Kirkpatrick
Zwammerdam to Nieuwkoop
May 14, 2021
We entered the Oude Rijn (Old Rhine), a small winding river that moves lazily through the countryside, passing through small villages. It is lined with many older charming houses whose patios face the river. Often there are tables and comfortable chairs. Sometimes residents read as they glance at the passing boats.
We stopped for the night at a marked mooring on the river’s bank. A couple had just moored and helped us in. He even pounded in the mooring stakes, as here there is no other option. Our takes are neatly stored inside one of the two large boxes that sit on the back deck, hanging along with the heavy hammer. Half in English and three quarters in Dutch he told us about some nice places to visit along the way. They left early the next morning, before we were out on our bikes.
The road running along the river leads to Zammerdam, just a few minutes by bike. You pass old but prosperous looking farms with huge slanting roofs and smaller buildings with stilts on four sides so the roof can rise as the structure fills with hay or straw, whatever they are storing for the long damp winter. I suppose they cover the sides to keep the goods dry.
Off to the left is the Ziendevaart Canal, leading to the entrance to a national park. There is a lovely view from the bridge, memorialized by the watercolor below. Follow the canal all the way through you get to Nieuwkoop, near where we are now a few days later but on the Grecht River. We biked down to the canal’s tiny lock. We could make this journey on the boat, we were told, but it looks very close to the margins.
On the way back to the boat we stopped at the dairy that offers its own cheese for sale. There you can see the 100 cows that produce the cheese I am trying to get out of the vending machine using my credit card. I finally find a card that works but in the meantime we had found the owner, who then went to put her shoes on. She came out, tall as the roof over the barn, speaking English quite well despite living well off the tourist track. That tells you how well they teach English here and are exposed to it regularly via American and British media offerings.
She told us they produce 1 million liters a year, that’s 1000 per head, more than a calf would consume. The output is enhanced by breeding. The cows live 8 years, and they are trying to breed the longest living lines to extend that to 10. They sell their milk to an organic cheese maker. She says that the Dutch government does not favor raw milk, for fear of infections, and apparently does not have a certification process. We bought a pretty old version of the cheese, thanked each cow separately, and will check it out when the real old one in the frig is history.
We moved on to Bodegraven, mooring outside town. You get a great view of the harbor. See the drawing. Friends came by to bring us the window he worked on. The glass was cracked by a rock last year. We’d bought a new one so he could try removing the old acrylic glass. He’d never done it before, and the manufacturer, Gebo, said it was difficult to do. It just took persistence, he said.
Bodegraven is tiny, with just one main street bisecting the other at the lock, with a few dozen shops. One of the shops is a Polish grocer. In we went, as we like the cuisine. They had some dill pickles and jars of bigos. Bigos is a sauerkraut dish with bits of pork. It’s very Old World. We enjoyed a jar for dinner and the rest for lunch the next day, all for about 5 euros. We went back for a few more jars.
We went through the lock to moor in town center. We should have done this yesterday. Unlike the other, here there is electricity and water that you pay for via an app. There is no mooring fee, amazingly. So there you are with some great old houses as neighbors. Our friends came by again, bringing some lumber so we can replace the wood damaged by the leaking windows in the after cabin. Their granddaughter is working at a hotel nearby, as an apprentice, so its not so far for them to have come, as they transport her. We stayed three quiet nights as permitted.
The windmill is part of the small brewery in town. It was closed the Monday and Tuesday we were there. Their website says that they are open on Wednesday but as of noon they were still closed and as we left shortly after we never got to try it. A Peace Corps friend saw my Facebook post on the topic and said she was there several times while staying in the village. She said the beer was excellent and there were several varieties to try. I was looking forward to it and the food trailer they have near the door, offering kip sate, fries and other common goodies.
It’s several hours on the river to Woerden. There is an old castle, but it looks new somehow. The old town is surrounded by an octagonal moat of which the castle is a part. There is an old mill on a mound, so the wings tower above. The harbor is fairly large but in need of modernization, as we could not fit in between the posts. We snugged in between two barges.
It was around 1730 that the bridge opened so we headed out of town, back the way we came as there is no other choice, and made the hard right onto the Grecht after slowly, slowly winding our way through the abandoned factories outside town. At the entrance there is barely room for one boat. The wind was picking up so it was hard to hold it in place even in that sheltered spot. At 1900 or so we saw a mooring with two boats already tied up. I tried to get between them but the wind was too strong so we moved on. At 1930 we found a lovely spot that was easy to get into, by the box windmill, just like the people at the 1900 effort said.
The wind blew like crazy all night and all the next day at this spot, outside Nieuwkoop. Nonetheless we were able to remove one of the leaking windows, cut the wood and filler, then reinstall the window.
We continue on the Grecht in the next blog.
Bodegraven Port, ink
Bodegraven is a small town on the Old Rhine/Oude Rijn. The Old Rhine is small and lazy, winding its way through the countryside. The old mill is restored and is now a bar serving its own brew, made in a larger facility just down the street. It was supposed to open on a Wednesday after being closed Monday and Tuesday but at midday it was still closed so we were unable to visit. A Peace Corps friend stayed in the town for several days. After seeing my post on Facebook she told me how good the beer was. Darn! Missed it!
Oude Rijn at Zwammerdam (watercolor)
The Old Rhine, Zwammerdam. This leads to a wildlife protected zone. In the other direction you get to Bodegraven, with its lovely harbor.
Bruekelen to Gouda
May 15
After passing through the charming riverside views of Bruekelen we spent two days near Nederhorst (May 5-6) , for us merely a wide spot in the Vecht, painting, drawing and doing some maintenance. It was more or less the same in tiny Monfoort except the morning after our arrival we had new neighbors in their 14 meter fiberglass yacht with a home port of “Antwerpen.” We made a bee line for their door, as we are planning a few months in Belgium once we can enter without spending large sums on tests.
They had some very good suggestions and made us realize how small Flanders is, and how even in Wallonie, the French speaking half of the country, English is commonly spoken. This was a surprise to us, as when we had property there we were the only Anglophiles around. The conversation evolved into boats, of course. The captain had a number of boat maintenance suggestions, as I was in the process of rewired the stern light and had run across a snag in the last few meters. He suggested smearing vaseline on the wire where it joints the fish wire. Another was to check construction dumpsters. There was one at the mooring. I did not find the block of wood I needed for the stern light, as I had to destroy the old one to get at the stern light wire to replace it, but I did find a long pole which we used to mark the air draft of our rain hood. Now when we come to a bridge with little clearance we can use the pole to determine if we will fit rather than bringing the boat to where the rain hood practically touches the bridge.
Aside from the practicalities, we enjoyed talking to the couple, our first sit down conversation in weeks and only the third or fourth since we arrived in early April. We had spoked with an Irish couple back in Amersfoort, who were very helpful with regards to vaccinations. We learned that our current neighbors’ boat came from Florida, shipped to Netherlands by the previous owner. This is a very expensive proposition. They added double pane windows, also very pricey, and removed the air conditioning. They leave their boat in Friesland every other year, in Antwerp the other for out of the water maintenance. We talked about a variety of other topics, with comments and concerns not out of the ordinary except they refuse to frequent a bar or restaurant in Brussels where they speak only French, the main language of Brussels. We were under the impression that because the capitol is in Flanders that Flemish would be the predominant language. This led to the a discussion of Dutch versus Flemish, we learned that the primary difference is in the pronunciation.
Oudewater was our next stop. It is another charming small town and a very old one. Now in the province of Utrecht again after a 700+ year hiatus, it has been around at least since 1265. There are 300 plus historic buildings, as well as nearly 230 municipal and national monuments, extraordinary for a town of this size. This wealth of architecture came from the hemp industry. The inhabitants came to be called ‘Geelbuiken,’ (Yellow Belly) from the stain the hemp made on their work clothes.
Oudewater was represented in the First Free State Assembly in Dordrecht in 1572. We visited the museum in Dordrecht dedicated to this event, at which they planned the break from Spain and where the House of Orange was established. The Spanish retaliated against the city by killing all but a handful of the inhabitants, an event still commemorated annually. The city was seriously damaged by fire as a result of the siege. Much of the historic city center dates from the reconstruction made possible by the hemp industry, the Dutch East India Company being a major customer. By the beginning of the 20th century, with the decline of the hemp industry over the past several centuries, many buildings were in dire condition, repaired and renovated since then, leaving us with this fine example of a 17th century town.
At the the 750th anniversary of city’s founding in 2015, King Willem-Alexander, of the house of Orange, visited the city.
Gouda (population 72,000) is famous for the cheese that bears its name, its fabulous 15th-century city hall, as well as churches and other historic buildings. Gouda was established by the Van der Goude family circa the 12th century. They built a fortified castle on the Gouwe River, from which the city’s name may have derived, and upon which we later traveled. The Gouwe was connected to the Hollandse Ijssel, a harbor was formed from the mouth of the latter, and Castle Gouda built to protect the harbor. The castle was destroyed in 1577, the city walls torn down between 1830 and 1854.
The famous cheese got its name from the city’s central role in its distribution, rather than its production. This came about by feudal decrees granting a sales monopoly to the city. The cheese porter guild, wearing special colored straw hats, transported the 16 kilo cheese rounds in wheel barrows to the market. The cheese was coated with wax, while now they use a yellow plastic coating. The cheese is then aged, producing final produces that range from soft to hard, the later termed Oude Gouda, which requires a 12 month period. If you know Gouda from what you buy in the US, the Oude version would be an entirely unrecognizable experience. It’s as hard as a high quality parmigiano.
From here we scooted to Amersfoort on the train for our first vaccination. It went smoothly. I had a sore arm for two days but otherwise we had no issues. We must return in June for the second injection. Doing this in the Netherlands means we avoid a trip to Spain, perhaps two. This would require exposing ourselves to the risks of infection and travel in general, plus $500 in tests in addition to the travel expenses. I’d receive notice from Salud that I would be getting the Johnson vaccine, meaning I would only need one visit. Peg has yet to receive an appointment from Spain. This could not have worked out much better.
Windmill on the Vecht, Nederhorst
Amersfoort to Muiden, Weesp and Breukelen
May 9, 2021
From our perch just outside Amersfoort we managed to secure an appointment for a Covid vaccination. We called the appointment line on advice from the Irish boaters we met in the Amersfoort harbor and on a second try found someone who knew how to make the database work for people who live on boats.
Our next destination is Muiden, famous for its castle, and the Vecht is lovely from here and most of the way to its source, passing through the lovely historic towns of Weesp and Breukelen (pronounced like and giving its name to Brooklyn) and small villages. It was a lovely if windy ride, with just a bit of wave action hitting us broadside so it was a comfortable trip to the lock. The friendly lockkeeper was waiting, the gate open. It’s an easy lock in and out right in the middle of town, shops, restaurants and houses on each side.
Muiden does not have any moorings in town center, unfortunately, so it’s either on a mooring from whence there is no land access or a paid spot in an unattractive area with neither water nor electricity, and a grumpy harbor master who did not bother giving us a receipt. So we moved on the next day to the downtown mooring in the middle of Weesp. From there we took the train to Schipol to get our digid code for the Netherlands. We will probably not ever need it, but if we need to interact with the Dutch government we can now do so online, as the digid code, as they call it, suffices for your signature.
We spent two days in decent weather near Nederhorst, where I rewired the persnickety navigation lights (corrosion had spread through the wire for several meters), before proceeding up the Vecht to Maarsen for the night, then through the next day Breukelen has magnificent buildings on the water, easy to enjoy at the sauntering pace. We now rest in the tiny village of Monfoort, just one other boat and a few dozen houses.
Koppelpoort (mill), pen and ink
Vischpoort, pen and ink
Almere to Amersfoort
Elburg, Harderwijk and Amersfort
Elburg
After a few dreary days at the end of our stay in Almere, with its happy reunions with our Dutch friends who even invited us to use their shower and helped us with re-bedding our leaking aft cabin windows, we set off on April 25. We took the Hoge Vaart back to the northeast. It’s a boring 5 hour journey to the small, isolated mooring before the lock that lifts you 5 meters into the Wolderwijd, the body of water that separates Flevoland, the polder upon which Almere is built, and the old land masses to the east and south and where you find historic towns versus those born in the last century. The next morning we entered the very narrow, one or two boat lock.
It was cold but sunny as we navigated under the cover of our rainhood. It is a 20 kilometer trip to Elburg, a small and very old village. The earliest residents left behind Neolithic stone tools and pottery shards. There are pottery shards from the Roman era. The earliest written record dates from 796 CE.
At the end of the 14th century they built a city wall and a mote, laying out the city on a grid, with improvements coming late in the 16th. In 1367 Elsburg joined the Hanseatic League. The railroad passed Elburg in 1863 due to the high price of land, which left the town in the backwater in which it remains. It remained a fishing and farming center until the end of WWII, dying off after the construction of Flevoland. Now it is a strictly for tourism, for which the intact medieval town serves well.
Harderwijk
Hardewijk dates from 1231, its defensive wall from the end of that century. The Grote Kerk (Great Church) came in the next century. The wall is largely gone and only one gate remains., the Vischpoort (Fish Gate). Harderwijk was also a member of the Hanseatic League.
Like Elburg it was once a fishing village. They still celebrate Aaltjesdag, Eel day. Today people come for festivities and the Dolfinarium. Larger and less medieval than Elburg, it is nonetheless quite charming, filled with old brick houses with steep roofs and bright red or black shutters. The plaza inside theVischpoort is lined with traditional houses, another voyage into the past.
Continuing to the southwest, we come to Amersfoort. The city’s name means the ford (foort) in the Amer River, now called the Eem. Records date from the 11th century. The city celebraed its 750th anniversary in 2009. Of course human occupation dates much farther in the past, with evidence of settlement to 1000 BCE.
The defensive wall was finished circa 1300, demolished late in the century to allow for expansion. The famous Koppelpoort is in the second wall. The houses on Muurhuizen (Wallhouses) Street sit on first wall’s foundations.
The Onze-Lieve-Vrouwentoren (Tower of Our Lady), nicknamed Lange Jan (‘Long John’), is 98 metres (320 ft) in height. It was the middle point of country when it was started in 1444. The church was destroyed by explosion in 1787, but the impressive tower remains with us. It is now the reference point of the RD coordinate system, the coordinate grid used by the Dutch topographical service. There are several buildings noted as national monuments. In the Middle Ages it was was an important for its textile industry its many breweries.
Of the three towns, it is both larger and generally more interesting, with more to do, although Elburg could easily serve as a medieval film set with not much effort.
Amersfoort is nicknamed Keistad (boulder-city). The Amersfoortse Kei is a a 9-ton boulder that was transported into the city in 1661 as a result of a bet between two landowners. The nicknaming embarrassed the town, so they buried the boulder in 1672. It was re-discoverd in 1903, then turned into a monument. Boulders are rare in the Netherlands.
