A BRAND NEW DAY - THURSDAY 24TH JULY - BOCHOLT TO MOL

We had almost convinced ourselves that we had no regrets about  not being in Maastricht, and perhaps eager to erase the memory of yesterday’s rush, we left early enough so that we could stop at a quiet mooring in the middle of nowhere to eat an equally quiet breakfast and think about where we might end up for the day, although it was almost morning tea time when we did.

We found a place on our charts that looked as though it might just be the tonic for whatever malaise had befallen us yesterday; a marina with a resort, in the middle of a lake, in the middle of nowhere and barely an hour away.   

It’s still a novelty to us in a country which is quite heavily populated, to discover places that are apparently so remote that they are a destination in their own right, yet, surrounded by people sunning themselves on their boats in the middle of a large lake we could be anywhere in the world.

There’s something about being among so many boats and boaty folk that makes fiddling with things less of a chore, so after a polite time of lying around, the proper solar controller we bought in Bremen was installed and demonstrating why it was worth seventy Euro more than the el-cheapo one we’d installed temporarily six or so years ago.

At this rate we’ll have working navigation lights by the end of the year too.