Although Vlieland - in contrast to Schiermonnikoog for instance - can be reached at any tide, the arrival and departure of boats is still largely governed by the favourable and unfavourable currents that the tides bring with them, which makes for an interesting daily flow.
What - in my view - is unusual is that the harbour here is almost full. Mid week in early September that is unexpected. Of course the very nice weather is a contributing factor. In the high season, during the school holidays, it happens that the harbour is actually closed to incoming craft, at the moment that's not quite the case, but I estimate over 95% occupancy.
There are quite a few 'charters'. These are old Dutch sailing vessels which can take between 20 and 40 guests. They are normally chartered to groups, always with a skipper and usually another deck hand cum cook. This time of the year the groups are exclusively teenagers between 14 and 17 years old, apparently on a 'bonding exercise with their school. All of them are German, it's the same in the pre-season in April/May. This business would be dead in the water were it not for the German guests. They are no problem, roam the harbour during the early evening hours (continuously looking at their mobile phones like teenagers everywhere) but when it gets dark they retreat to their vessels and are quiet.
Yesterday, a big old ferry-like vessel came in, carrying about 2000 bicycles (we counted / extrapolated them). It took all afternoon to offload all of them. We think these are surplus bicycles from Terschelling (the island next door). Now that the season for cycle rentals is drawing to an end, these seem to be stored here on Vlieland. Those are a LOT of bikes! And the offloading process was pretty inefficient, one bike at a time...
Yesterday we cycled (on our own folding bikes) around a bit and saw some signs of autumn approaching: mushrooms!
And the waves at sunset yielded a very pretty picture.
Here are some impressions:
Location:Havenweg,Vlieland,The Netherlands
No comments:
Post a Comment