Texel

The 4.5 hour trip from Vlieland to Texel was relatively uneventful. We had carefully planned the departure time in order to have the current with us for all but the first mile or two, which meant that we managed to average close to 7 knots. The wind was light, but unfortunately the visibility quite poor: although there was no fog, we never saw land (until maybe 15 minutes from our destination) and we had to follow the channel markers carefully and use the GPS. The AIS also worked fine and we could easily see all the fishing vessels around us on the plotter. Our visibility on the Internet, via AIS shore stations does not seem to work all that well, some of our followers are complaining! I don't think there is much I can do about it, but I'll try to understand that feature a bit better.

Before going onto Texel tomorrow (we'll take our the bicycles), I still owe you the story about West and East Vlieland. Over 300 years ago, the main village on Vlieland was called 'West Vlieland' and obviously it was situated on the West side of the island. Now all the Wadden islands, the Dutch as well as the German ones, are slowly moving towards the East. This is caused by erosion by the sea removing sand from the Western shores and sand being deposited on the Eastern sides. This also happened on Vlieland, and halfway the 16th century West Vlieland disappeared into the sea and East Vlieland was built as the new village on the island, which it still is today. Two plaques at the village hall remind us of this:









Although generally the weather was not very agreeable during our stay on Vlieland (too much of a very cold wind), we enjoyed our stay there.

These little ones were shopping for beach spades and buckets in the village:





And we set up the music studio for Lyn:





During our trip today we saw 'charters' and fishing vessels:







And on arrival the sun came out so that we could have a nice walk after dinner:





How's that for a typical Dutch picture!

We'll stay here for a few days, probably until Sunday. In the meantime, only blogposts when we have something specific to show or tell.

Location:Laagwaalderweg,,The Netherlands