3 & 4 August 2015
One of the reasons for coming this far East was to visit the city of Groningen. We thought that four or five days in the city would be good, but after a bit of back-of-fag-packet calculating, we thought that if we wanted to keep doing our leisurely meandering that we had done thus far, we would be getting a bit shot of time for this trip. So we decided to save Groningen for another time and, when we arrived at the junction of the Reitdiep with the Starkenburgh Canal, we turned to starboard (west) instead of heading south to Groningen.
We are continually amazed that in what is a relatively small 'flat' country, the scenery changes so much and so often over here. This could be central France:
By 1315 we had reached the lock at Gaarkeuken which we shared with a large (100 metre) commercial and two other plaisanciers:
In the lock the wind dropped to zero and it was 29C in the shade; suddenly it became very hot. We motored on, thinking about somewhere to stop but nowhere really appealed. Eventually we decided to continue to the Alde Feanen where we were two weeks ago (although it felt like two months!)
We like these little 'bolt holes' that are fairly common along the waterways here; they can vary from glorified umbrellas to quite substantial constructions.
So, after 6.5 hours and 32 nautical miles, we arrive at the island on Alde Feanen. Our mooring was slightly to the north of our previous one, se we were alongside one of the plastic pontoons again (no problem with that) instead of the grassy bank. Beautiful calm evening.
We stayed two nights here. The forecast for 4th was rain and wind. It actually rained non stop for ten hours but at 1900, pretty much on the dot, the clouds vanished and we enjoyed a clear sunny evening although the wind remained blowing about F4-5 until late.
/Rich
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