THINGS TO MAKE AND DO - FRIDAY 10 JULY - GOUDA

Yesterday had seen the beginning of yet another turn of warmer weather, and while it was a perfect day for milling with the crowds in the market square, as the temperatures rose this morning we were grateful to have the place more or less to ourselves to enjoy simply wandering in the shadows, to see what we could see, without having to bump our way through the queues outside the tourist shops.  The town felt different.  More comfortable perhaps and all the more attractive for the lack of the market (tourist?) crowd.

By mid-afternoon once again rejuvenated with coffee and apple cake, we were ducking between the sunny patches, finding the dappled shade as we walked off unglamorously in the heat, in search of hardware and provisions.

When we bought the boat, our toilet roll holder was the victim of three decades of abuse and was not quite capable of holding anything.  One of us had decided the other should make a temporary repair until we found something that we considered suitable.

Almost two decades of further much gentler use later, the non-repaired end gave up with rather a loud clatter, rendering the whole gadget permanently unfit for any purpose except perhaps for metal recycling.   We found a suitable replacement a very pleasant walk away, resolved on the way back to amend our list of “Things to do URGENT” by deleting the item “buy TP holder” to read “INSTALL buy TP holder”.

As we passed the maritime museum and its “collection” of privately owned historical boats, amid centuries old houses, with the windmill’s ever watchful, we couldn’t help but admire enthusiasts everywhere keeping the past alive.   The work involved in simply keeping these boats afloat, the houses waterproof and the windmills turning, let alone in proper working condition doesn’t bear contemplation.   

One of us actually shuddered at the thought of how long their lists of “things to do URGENT”must be.

CHEESY - THURSDAY 9 JULY - GOUDA

The first page of our cursory search for “things to see in a day in Gouda” revealed a range of attractions with a total admission price of well over two hundred and fifty Euros per person.  While we are the first to defend venues charging for admission to offset the cost of the the wear and tear of ancient monuments and preserving them for the enjoyment of future generations, but still, our first impression on seeing all those “entry fees” in one place made us think that the actual pronunciation of Gouda should perhaps be “Gouge-ya”.

Given the plethora of stuff to do in the town, we may be being unfair, or maybe we were the victims of some sort of AI search result scam, where the search engine has deduced that we are living on a “yacht” but without grasping the complete context of what that might mean.   

As a first impression did not improve as we wandered down to the markets on this glorious Thursday morning. If Gouda was called “CheeseWorld”, it would make a passable job of filling a corner of any theme park, except that with the exception of the “free” Cheese trading reenactment in the market square each Thursday, the entry ticket into every “attraction” bore something slightly more than a nominal cost.  

Despite all that, we all agreed that the “Cheesy Market reenactment” was indeed almost worth the price of admission, if for no other reason than it was very colourful and gave us the chance to sit for twenty minutes or so.  

The town is actually a delightful place to hang around, and while we may not have contributed to the coffers of the museums or churches, nor to the “museum” charging to view the manufacture of Syrup Waffles, we did do our best to ensure the man selling coffee and applecake, and the lady with the cheese van would be able to put food on the table for the coming week.

BACK ON THE BIKE - WEDNESDAY 8 JULY -DORDRECHT to GOUDA

 

Writing retrospectively enables us to confirm that the day, when it dawned, was to be the dullest, greyest affair that we would see for several weeks.    

We hadn’t slept particularly well, and as it turned out neither had Chris or Annie.  We couldn’t work out whether we were excited, perhaps a teensy bit anxious about taking off onto a busy waterway against the tide or if we were all just chomping at the bit to get underway, impatient to wait for the tide to recede sufficiently so that we wouldn’t be facing the worst of its race.   

For reasons which we haven’t yet discovered, all of our tidal information was hopelessly optimistic in forecasting the time of the high at Rotterdam.  Even though we had patiently waited until morning tea o’clock before setting out, for the first few uncomfortable hours we found ourselves fighting a tide which simply refused to turn.

Cruising at speeds which at times dropped to four and a bit kilometres per hour on a highway littered with ships and ferries travelling at up to ten times that speed, is not everyone’s ideal of romance but for those who wait, better things are just around the corner, if indeed one can avoid the turning ships.

By day’s end, it hadn’t rained more than a few drops, once off the main river the cruise through the suburbs and farmlands was mostly pleasant when it wasn’t being delightful.  As we expected it would, all that anxiety had come to naught.  

We finally had the sense that we were on our way, and were more than excited at the prospect of discovering the delights of Gouda after what no doubt would be a very sound sleep for all that night!

FROM A DIFFERENT ANGLE - TUESDAY 7 JULY -DORDRECHT

 

It seems odd because we’ve been on the boat for a couple of weeks, but we still haven’t settled into any sort of routine.

A few years from now, anyone reading this will have not indication that it was written more than two weeks later than the date of the post, but that pretty much sums up our current, somewhat relaxed state of mind.   

A year ago the prognosis for travel now was not bright.  A  week ago we had no expectation of being quite so far into the Netherlands as we are, and a day ago we once again began to feel as though we could enjoy our surroundings without feeling ever so slightly guilty for doing no more than reading a book.

It’s surprising how much our confidence was dented by the consequences of that one small fall, and it’s perhaps a little challenging to admit, but tomorrow we depart on a waterway we have not previously travelled, to towns we have not seen, and we both feel a little discomfort with that thought.  All we have done to date has been to retrace routes we know, and there’s a safety in that, a familiarity that makes it easy.  We don’t have to think.

It’s not a terrifying prospect, it’s why we travel; there are things to see, places to go, people to meet, but we’d be lying to ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge that it would be far simpler to just go up to the harbour master’s office and simply extend our stay for a week.

Tomorrow, we’ll be “back on the bike” and we think we are looking forward to that…

SOMETIMES WE SIT AND THINK - MONDAY 6 JULY -DORDRECHT

 

Every now and then, it’s time to stop, sit, do nothing and take stock of things.

When we talk about that others often say that they could never do “nothing”, and if we think about it we could probably agree, Even after almost (shudder) twenty years of retirement, simply sitting and reading a book feels like procrastination.   In the case of the writer who at the time was probably a week or more behind in his journaling, it probably was, but nonetheless we pretty much had what we consider to be a day off.

Naturally, there were provisions to be found, a few smalls to wash, a journey to map, some repairs to add to our list marked “THINGS TO DO - URGENT” and at one point in the morning one of us had an overwhelming desire to cycle off to find a hardware store to find a replacement for our broken toilet roll holder.

Fortunately that desire was overcome by thinking about the effort that would be required to actually carry the bike to the shore, service it and pump up its tyres.

With the thinking part of the day over, we were free therefore, to (mostly), just sit.

THE BOOK MARKET - SUNDAY 5 JULY -DORDRECHT

Within minutes of our arrival, Rob our kind and helpful Harbour Master reminded us that the Book Markets were on Sunday, which in the fullness of time turned out to be today.

It must be said that at the time our heads were in a flood of memories of yesteryear and our ears were not at all pricked up at the prospect of visiting another market, not even when he added that there are often stalls with records as well.  The only records we keep these days are the absolute minimum required by the tax office.

We were not prepared for the shock of just how many stalls there would be, nor how many people would be flocking to the old town to visit.   More than a thousand people selling books by our count, take up very many kilometres of every main thoroughfare, and by not long after lunch o’clock it seemed that every stall had more than a thousand customers.   Even by three in the afternoon, the carparking stations on the city perimeter had lengthy queues waiting to enter.  

We didn’t buy, nor mostly did we mostly even stop to look.  Simply ambling through the throng consumed the greater portion of that mythical 10,000 steps that neither of us aspire to reaching even on the best of days.

We’d absorbed enough of whatever one absorbs when surrounded by piles of lovely printed things, that by the end of the day, one of us was content to sit for the afternoon reading from the other’s e-reader.  The other, unsure why he’d offered her his so quickly when hers mysteriously remained in Ireland last month, was content to scratch around and do anything but keep this blog up to date.

TODAY IS MARKET DAY - SATURDAY 4 JULY -DORDRECHT

One of us had seen three market days come and go last year in Dordrecht, while the other had sat bewildered while he did, waiting patiently, immobile in the nest like some sort of oversized baby bird, for his return with whatever morsels he might decide might best lighten the air on board. 

If we could have avoided walking up the “ramp of terror” at the end of the pontoon, we might have, but there was no avoiding it and that, as it turns out, was for the best.   It seems that when one is not over-tired, in pain, with an immobile limb and the other not aching from hauling all those kilos backwards up a ramp on a wheelchair with flat tyres, trying as best he could to avoid the screwed-on anti slip steps doing their best to jar the occupant from her seat, that the ramp holds no fear at all.

Neither did the walk downtown.   Even the stop for a curious scratch around in the almost invisible depression that was the root cause of our disruption caused no pain. 

The market crowds seemed smaller than last year, the chips and kibbeling were just as good, just as fresh and just as delightfully greasy.   

Curiously, while one of us harbours fond memories of hobbling the half kilometre or so “home” in the mizzle in order to get the prizes back in some semblance of edible condition, the other remembers little, which may (or may not) explain the relish with which she devoured such dubiously unhealthy product at the time.