Further down the IJssel: to Kampen

We continued our trip down the river today. Although with 37 (nautical) miles it was the furthest day of our trip this year, with the current behind us it did not take us that long: by 2 pm we were tied up in Kampen, which is close to where the IJssel ends in the IJsselmeer.
It's a nice and quite rural stretch of river, between Zutphen and Kampen. You pass one town, Deventer and a few villages. Here are some impressions:

Location:Kampen

Starting down the IJssel

The first few hours today we were still going up the Neder Rijn. We passed the third weir and lock, at Driel and them came to Arnhem, passing under the bridge where the Battle of Arnhem, part of operation Market Garden, was fought in September 1944:





At this stage, we were doing about 6 knots. A few miles later, we reached IJsselkop, where the river IJssel splits off from the Rhine. We made the sharp turn to port to go downstream the IJssel and now we were suddenly doing over 9 knots, thanks to a 3 knot current downriver. This of course was good for us, but it is not so nice when one goes upstream! Therefore, the big commercial boats want to stick to the inside bends of this meandering river, where the current is less than on the outside. That means that every now and then, they need to navigate on the 'wrong' (= port) side of the river. They indicate this by showing a blue 'board', with a white flashing light on it. Like this, a rather rare (on this river) commercial passenger boat:





When you come across one of these, you need to quickly cross the river and pass 'starboard to starboard'). So you need to keep your wits about you, and look carefully at each oncoming barge to see whether or not he shows the blue board.

With this great speed, we soon reached our destination for today, the medieval town of Zutphen. This is a really nice and well kept historical place, one of the cities of the old Hanseatic league. These are part of the old fortifications:





As you can see, the weather is reasonable, we get a rain shower every now and then, but so far most of the rain has fallen at night :-)

Tomorrow, we plan to continue the trip down the IJssel.

Location:Zutphen

Up the Rhine

This morning we started our trip up the 'big rivers'. After negotiating the lock at Vianen, we turned starboard up the Lek. This river is quite busy at this point, as the commercial Amsterdam - Rotterdam traffic passes here. But a few miles upstream is the intersection with the Lekkanaal and after that it's very quiet.

Next comes the weir ('stuw') at Hagestein. This weir is normally closed, so you have to take a lock around it. At very high river levels / flows, the weir gets opened to control the river level. It was closed today:





So we were by ourselves in a big lock, which took us up 3m.

Next was the intersection with the Amsterdam - Rhine canal, which is part of the main commercial shipping highway between Amsterdam and Germany.
Fortunately, there is a traffic control post here: you report on the VHF and they guide you across by telling you to wait or to cross in front of the approaching commercial barges. That takes a lot of stress out of the crossing!
By this time, at Wijk bij Duurstede, the name of the river changes from Lek to Neder Rijn (lower Rhine).

Then another weir and lock at Amerongen, so another 3m up.

The river was still very quiet. But we saw some interesting ferries, so called 'gierponten'. These are ferries which are connected, by way of a very strong cable, to a little boat which is anchored in the middle of the river. The little boat act as a pivot point for a sort of 'pendulum' with the ferry at the end. The cable is supported by two more little boats, the whole arrangement looks like this:





Unfortunately you can't see the ferry itself very well in this picture, it's on the very left. I'll try to get another shot if we pass another gierpont tomorrow.

It's very pretty on the river, the sun was out every now and then:





Before 3 we got to Wageningen and we decided to call it a day and have a look around the town, which is best known by the fact that the German occupiers surrendered here at the end of the second World War in 1945.

Location:Wageningen

A cold and quite long day

When we woke up this morning, the cabin temperature was 4C! So we started not only the coffee machine, like we do every morning (it gets loaded up with ground coffee and water before I go to bed), but also the heater. So the boat warmed up whilst we had coffee in bed.

By 8:30 we were off. Along the Hollands Diep, the Amer, the Niewe Merwede, the Boven Merwede, through the Linge lock at Gorinchem and along the Merwedekanaal to Vianen, where we are tied up now. It was a trip of almost 7 hours. It's still cold and there are rainy spells too now. The heater is on, so it's very comfortable on board.

The plan is to go up Lek and Neder Rijn tomorrow and start going down the IJssel after that. We are doing a lot of 'varen', this trip!

Sorry, no pictures today, not a lot of spectacular things to see.

Location:Merenborch,Vianen,The Netherlands

Back in Willemstad

We left Burghsluis early this morning, out of the harbour just after 8.
There were several rain squalls threatening, but they all happened to pass either in front or behind us. Outside, in the fresh wind, it was bitterly cold, but inside it was pleasant.
We again passed under the impressive Zeeland bridge:





Two locks and five and a half hours after departure we tied up in Willemstad again. Some shopping done for the next few days, soup for tomorrow and Wednesday prepared and now it's time for 'borrel' (= drinks).

Burghsluis

Whist on our way to Burghsluis yesterday, we contacted our friends Jan Edu and his wife Manon. Jan Edu and I sailed Europe dinghies in the distant past and on two occasions I joined him with a bunch of students on a skiing trip to Adelboden where his family had a house.
We arranged that he would collect us from the harbour for a meal at their house nearby. We did not know about the existence of the 'Oosterscheldekreeft', a lobster which is caught in the part of the Delta where we are. But now we know all about these creatures:





Jan Edu had organised five of them to be eaten by us (including his daughter Martine, who is a doctor working in nearby Goes). It was a most memorable meal.






We decided to spend another day in Burghsluis, it is a nice, small and quiet harbour. The weather was sunny (but very cold) and it was blowing quite hard, about 20 knots.




The plan was to have mussels at the restaurant on the harbour, but it appears that fresh mussels are out of season until June (or so the restaurant manager told us). So we had different fish instead.

Tomorrow the plan is to leave early and return to Willemstad. We need to commence the trip 'back North' so that we are back in Monnickendam in time to catch our flight back to London on 25 April.

Location:Groenlandsweg,Burgh-Haamstede,The Netherlands

Willemstad and beyond

Sorry, I did not get around to writing a post yesterday.
We left Rotterdam just after 9 and navigated our way through the busy harbour:





You see all sorts of pretty unusual things here. This is a big barge full of smaller (typical European commercial) barges. I guess it had come in from China and was being offloaded in Rotterdam:





After that we went via the Oude Maas and the Spui to the Hollands Diep. There was no wind at all, perfect motorboat weather and we made good time to arrive in Willemstad around 14:30. Willemstad is one of our favourite stopovers in the South of the Netherlands, it is very pretty and has excellent facilities. My cousin Carel and his wife Mieke live nearby and they picked us up from the boat and took us for a very nice dinner. It was good to see them again!
This morning we left at 9 again, this is our now empty mooring:





I am writing this blogpost whilst we are motoring on the Volkerak. It is nice and sunny with a light breeze behind us. Here is the helmsman:

Location:On the Volkerak