Harlingen to Groningen

"Let's go out about 9 o'clock, there's sure to be some shanty singing in the town with all those sailors here for the rowing race". Graham is ever the optimist. Having heard tales of the Boscastle gig rowers on their annual race weekend in Tresco we were sure there would be a lively atmosphere in town. As we strolled in we saw a slew of burly chaps spilling on to the pavement. "Aha our first lively pub". As we drew closer we noticed the masculine brutes were not partaking of any hop based beverage but we're queueing up for ice creams and pancakes. Party animals!

 

Different types of fish nets

Quentin enjoys the scenery

Walking around town proved to be a further disappointment with no rowdy behaviour or alcohol induced antics whatsoever, so we thought we'd have a few drinks and go back to Dickie. We found a lovely hotel overlooking the port and sat down to order a beer. Within minutes a strapping young lad appeared and started taking the cushions in from all the chairs around us...."can you pay now because we're closing in a few minutes". It was 9 40 pm. Tresco it ain't.

Having said that we spent a very relaxing morning watch the 130 rowing boats take off from Harlingen to Terschelling which is quite a row. It was extremely well organised and took exactly one hour for the 13 groups of ten to take off. Our favourite was WaterHex the Water Witch which sported a very lovely witch on a broomstick on the front.

The boats head off

We headed off to Groningen after the race and I had just finished reading about there being very little traffic in the city as most people had bicycles when we got stuck in a Giant traffic jam. Several hours later we were able to drive the wrong way down a slip road to get off the highway and head to our next destination.

Our first traffic jam

Groningen is a busy city with the hint of Bangkok ( in a good way) about it. Everyone cycles and the centre is jammed with bikes. They are undergoing a major reconstruction and a large part of the main square is being rebuilt. We did the city walk and easily cycled the 4km in and out of town - I must say this cycling lark is rather fun.

Enjoying a cycle

Harlingen by Graham

Harlingen has to be on of my favourite motorhome stopovers - I loved the sleepy old town, the beautiful old sailing boats, the people, the lift bridges and the aire. For 7.5 Euro a night it was a bargain. If you are in the area it is a must, especially if you can make the tall ships race this summer in July.

row boats the night before  the race

The Dutch must have much softer bums than the Cornish – if you look closely at the photos you will notice that one of the gigs has seats has a sheep skin cover! We wouldn’t expect the tough Boscastle gig rowers to put up with this!

padded seating

There are only 10 marked (and listed) spaces for motorhomes but last night we counted 26. We are told that there can be up to 50 on this location and that nobody minds as long as they buy a parking ticket. As usual, our neighbours were very helpful and chatty. Kerriann had noticed that they had a lovely (rat sized) white dog that they transported around in the wicker basket on their bicycles! “You can purchase one like this locally” they tempted Kerriann but I put my foot down (being very careful not to squash the dog).

Shops and Sailing Ships

When at home I think the less time spent in supermarkets the better, but I have to admit that when travelling through Europe supermarkets have a strange fascination. Trying to decipher the contents of jar and tins, looking at the wondrous creatures displayed on the fish counter and spotting the rare boxes of PG tips are amongst the most enjoyable activities that can be undertaken in foreign supermarkets. Having said that they seem to be very well hidden in Holland – we drove for two days without knowingly passing one. Yesterday, however, we eventually spotted a Lidl and managed to catch the slip road and park Dickie without any problems – and would you believe it…..next door was another supermarket!

Graham

We have arrived in Harlingen on the North West coast of Holland which we reached by driving over, what looked like on the map, a particularly terrifying bridge over an extremely wide stretch of water.

 It turned out to be less scary than it looked and was rather fun. It’s still pouring and Graham has insisted I wear an entire plastic jumpsuit arrangement as we walk into town…to protect the jeans and over-frock from excessive dampness. I now look like a giant pink and black Michelin Man and will not be popping into any frock shops as I may be arrested for crimes against fashion.

Call the Fashion Police!

We are parked up by the harbour and every so often the bridge is raised to allow the beautiful Dutch barges and other vessels to go through.

Dickie watching Dutch Barge

Dickie in Docks

 There is a race on for rowing boats (which look a bit like gigs) on Friday so we are staying for that. Harlingen is hosting the Tall Ships race for 2014 in July so that should be an amazing event….it’s a very attractive city with a long sailing history. We even found a house with a window full of witches – not sure if that has anything to do with sailing but we’re off to the museum today so we may find out.

K

Witch Window

Oh dear what can the matter be?

To paraphrase the old folk song/children’s rhyme:

Oh dear what can the matter be

Kerriann is locked in the lavatory

She’s been there from Monday to Saturday (well it seemed like a long time)

Nobody knew she was there.

I can now tick ‘being locked in a toilet stall in a public place’ off my list.

The day started well and I was actually thinking that it would be a bit of a quite blog day. The motorway via Rotterdam was a little challenging to say the least – it makes Spaghetti junction look rather straight by comparison so I would recommend avoiding it if possible. To assist our recovery from the stressful journey we decided to have a quick stopover at a garden centre.

‘I’ll just have a quick slash while I’m here’ I thought and left Mr Fluffy perusing the hose pipes while I popped off to the loo. I noticed a ‘DEFUNKT’ sign on one of the doors so went in to the next loo and locked the door. As I tried to exit the stall the nightmare began…no amount of turning of handle or lock would get the door to open so I proceeded to knock loudly on the door yelling ‘Graham’ in a ‘not very frenzied at all’ screech. As Graham is totally deaf to high pitched noises (he has no trouble hearing farts though) I imagined him wandering around for hours wondering what the hell I was doing in the loo.

Happily, after several minutes of barely contained panic, I heard some dulcet Dutch tones issuing instructions to me in a totally incomprehensible language and a familiar chortle emanating from Mr Fluffy who had come over to check out what all the fuss was about. After much banging with hammers and removing of door furniture it still would not budge and I thought I’d be there for hours, but around twenty minutes later the door was yanked off its hinges and I was liberated to the sight of two very apologetic Dutchmen, a couple of ladies who were there to see the outcome, and a broadly smiling Mr Fluffy, camera phone at the ready, snapping away at the whole incident.

out come the hinge pins

last resort - a big crowbar!

Phew!

It was totally hilarious and the chaps said ‘This has never happened before’. Typical!

We are now at a rather gorgeous campsite at Bloemandaal aan Zee called De Lakens. It is 21 euros a night but tomorrow, as it’s holiday season, it goes up to 64 euros so we will be moving on. It’s a shame as it would be great to stay longer, it’s right near the beach and some lovely bars on the front. It’s absolutely pouring down outside now so we’ve got the tele on and are feeling rather cozy in Dickie. Heading further north tomorrow.

Hooray!

TomTom sat nav disaster rectified! I have managed to reload the campervan settings so we can go back to using just one satnav at a time.

Kerriann driving Dickie

I know that many of you prefer maps to Satnavs and I can understand your reasons, but I have to say that I agree with Anthony and Donna who say that the Sat Nav provides marital bliss – that is to say it stops arguments. Trying to find aires and campsites in far away lands with instructions in foreign languages can be a real pain. Our second-hand unit (a TomTom Start 25 with the Europe Camper maps added) is a godsend. It warns us when we are going over the speed limit, and it is programmed so that (in campervan mode) it avoids ‘lower than Dickie’ bridges and ‘narrower that Dickie’ roads. It also speaks to us when we are near an LPG station so that we get plenty of warning if we need to top up our gas. Having said that there is enough gas emanating from Kerriann’s backside to power the whole trip – if only I could collect it! (Charming! - K) 

The Satnav is also programmed to tell us when we are near an ancient site in the UK – it does however have a problem pronouncing ‘megalith’. TomTom says me-gar-lith with a lot of emphasis on the gar which causes us endless amusement. We now refer to all ancient monuments as meGARliths. We have kept our very old Snooper 2000 (camper edition) as a back up but much prefer the TomTom. The Camper editions of these satnavs already have lots of useful points of interest loaded but we add LPG stations (as already mentioned), Camping Car Aires (for European free wild camping sites), Wildcamping (for UK wild camping sites), and Motorhome Stopovers (similar to aires).

On a previous trip Kerriann discovered that she could download and change the SatNav voice. She loaded an American born-again preacher who kept telling us that ‘by the grace of god you have reached your destination’. I am pleased to say she hasn’t (yet) discovered how to alter many of the settings on this unit. We have toyed with the idea of creating our own ‘witches' directions' – ‘deosil at the next roundabout’ or ‘at the next junction take the left hand path’. What do you think? We currently have a polite female voice on Tommy but I must say my intuition tells me that a male voice would give more precise and accurate directions?  (Harumph - K)

I have resolved one of our other problems with the aide of technology – Kerriann likes watching tele occasionally. I find that when the tele is on it distracts me from reading or doing my many other tasks so I brought with us a tiny fm radio transmitter that can be plugged into the sound output jack on the television. We can then listen to the TV through the motorhome radio speakers – far better quality - or Kerriann can tune into the retransmitted audio signal on the radio in her smartphone. This means that she can listen to the tele on headphones whilst wandering around the van and I can read in silence. Perfect!

The other wonderful bit of technology is our external wifi arial. This is a box of tricks with a long wire that plugs into a laptop usb port. It enables us to easily pick up wifi HotSpots. It is so good that, touch wood, we have managed to get free wifi at every single overnight stop in Europe so far. We are now in our 5^th country – Cornwall, England, France, Belgium and Holland.

Strijensis Yachthaven

The roads were horribly busy with massive trucks on our drive around Antwerp this morning but my nerves held out (I don’t think Kerrian’s did) and we eventually ended up winding our way through some tiny single track roads to this lovely stopover in a yacht marina at Strijensas. By the way, if you ever come here in a motorhome please ignore your sat nav (whether you've just rectified a disaster on it or not) and just follow the road signs.  

Feeding the sheep in Strijensis

It’s been raining but now the sun has got its hat on - hip hip hip hooray!

Graham

Eeklo to Globbendonk

Who can see a name like Globbendonk and not want to visit it? 

After a stroll along the canal this morning, resplendent with a bag of rubbish, we headed off. The rubbish was a bit of a nightmare as there were no bins anywhere in the vicinity of the Aire or near the boats. After about half an hour we came upon a gigantic boat called Ebernhaezer with a couple of British people working on it - well one was painting it the other was flicking her dog's poo into the bushes. We asked them where to put the rubbish and they kindly offered to take it and add it to their own as there were no bins in the area. How lovely people are!

The day started well with Graham leaving the gas ring on for half an hour, thinking he had turned it off, and with me putting our new frying pan on the hob without taking the plastic instructions off the bottom, causing a small fire in the van. All was well as I calmly took the pan, complete with flames, outside to show Graham. He too, calmly, bounced from his chair and dealt with the situation admirably by whacking it on the ground. A lovely way to ease into the day.

Mr Fluffy did a fabulous job manoeuvring around the Antwerp ring road. We seem to have come up with a temporary solution to the satnav disaster - we now have two - yes two - satnavs going at the same time. The Tom Tom has the best screen but the Snooper is set up for campervans so will not take us down any miniscule streets or under any low bridges. They seem to be getting on rather well and have not caused much of a problem with them barking directions.

We have arrived in Globbendonk and it's about 26 degrees. A rather nice place which is big on cycling - we may stay two days and get the bikes out.

Gent to Eeklo

Today is Saturday. Not the best day to visit the headquarters of Tom Tom in Belgium we discovered. As we are on holiday we both have no clue as to what day it is so I can not blame Mr Fluffy entirely for this one. As you will see from the photos the Tom Tom HQ appears to be something of a work in progress. Just a tad of building work is going on in the general area so needless to say we were unsuccessful in our quest to rectify the sat nav disaster.

Look Carefully for Tom Tom HQ sign

'I'm sure this is Tom Tom HQ...no really'

We went on to the aire in Ghent which was hideous at best and likely a dogging spot at worst. There were a lot of truckers in the general area and it was about 10 miles from the attractive town centre. We decided to head on to Eeklo which is a lovely town and the aire has a reassuringly devilish statue at the entrance. There are statues all around us here and we are loving that it is free. Met a Dutch cat that travels everywhere with its owners who were extremely pleasant and explained the aire to us. The kitty litter tray in their teeny van was a bit of a put off for me but the cat was very sweet nonetheless. The parking area is right on the canal and we met a very chatty British chap who lives on his narrow boat and who regaled us with stories of his travels down the Rhine. Some of his experiences sounded quite hairy to say the least.

The Eeklo Devilish Aire Guardian

Walked in to town and dutifully visited the church of St Vincent where we were greeted by, what I can only describe as, a very sprightly Belgian version of Julie Walters playing Mrs Overall. Complete with dowagers' hump and with mop in hand, she happily offered us very tasty boiled sweets as we gazed at the altar, before she went whizzing off to the entrance of the church to grab us some guidebooks in English. Off she went again, back to her mopping, smiling and bowing as she went. A very unusual experience but a very pleasant one at the same time. Despite it being a relatively modern building (late 19^th century) it was extremely ornate and beautifully decorated inside – we highly recommend a visit.

 

Dickie complete with narrow boat man in the foreground

We are turning into a techno delight here as Mr Fluffy has worked out a way of sharing a wee fee hotspot with me and I can now listen to the tele (yes I am a tele addict) via my mobile phone with headphones so I don't disturb his non stop download of sat nav updates.

We've managed to control our waffle consumption thus far to nil but we are loving the Belgian bread and custard tarts. Hopefully our daily walks will burn off some of the calories.