When a few days ago I put out the flags, there was an elderly man fishing behind the boat. I politely wished him a good morning and we had a short chat. It transpired that he lived in the house in front of which we were moored and had lived there for over 50 years! When he caught a fish, he gave it to a cat which expectantly was 'hanging around'.
We went off shopping and decided to buy some 'Tompoucen' (these are similar to custard slices) to have with our coffee and invite him too.
That was really a good idea, he turned out to be 90 years old and told us his life story, from being born on a boat in Joure (4th of 13 children!) to going to work age 13, starting his own potato wholesale business (with a brother) and ending up offering boat trips on the barge which he used to transport the potatoes.
After coffee, he went back to the fishing rod and a heron joined, also waning his share of fish!
A heron, it appears, can eat a lot of fish very fast!
We left shortly afterwards and made our way to a place in the sticks near the Driewegsluis, on the border between Friesland and Overijssel.
From there we moved to Blokzijl. It was Queen Máxima's birthday, so the flag plus streamer was flying from the Blokzijl church.
Heather and Trevor are becoming old pro's in handling Amber, here they are tying up as we had to wait for a bridge of which the keeper was on lunch.
We are now in Giethoorn, the 'Venice of the North'. It threatens to be decent weather tomorrow, we need that as certainly for the past 10 days it has been quite dismal: cold, grey and wet. So if all goes to plan, there will be sunny Giethoorn pictures tomorrow!
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