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.  

BABYLON BY WATERBUS - FRIDAY 3 JULY -ROTTERDAM

Still in a somewhat confused state, we would describe it as “akin to Jetlag” if we didn’t think Mr Perkins would get a big head about it, when Chris and Annie told us they’d planned a day trip to Rotterdam on the waterbus, we leapt at the chance to accompany them, if for no other reason than it would postpone the confronting of our Dordrecht demons!

Expecting to see Rotterdam in a day is a bit like visiting Australia for a week and expecting to see the lot.   

Therefore we set out without any great expectations, and happened quite accidentally on the Port Museum where we were expertly guided over the  maritime history of what was once the world’s largest port, leaving it with sufficient gaps in our curiosity to ensure that we would have to return for a much longer stay at some future time.

As a result of a bit of wartime nastiness, there are more monuments to where other places once were than actual ancient monuments, which allows a certain freedom of planning and experimentation in land use not possible in cities bound by their history.  We walked for hours through seventy years of modern and post-modern building evolution, resting to watch urban surfers as we often did on the rocks at Kirra, ironically perhaps at the time the damaged city was having its labour pains.

We had quite a lot to think about on the ferry ride home, but to be fair we were all a bit too tired to care!

DOWN TO THE SEA IN SHIPS - THURSDAY 2 JULY -WILLEMSTAD to DORDRECHT

We can’t be sure whether the tiny knot of apprehension was because we had a busy waterway to traverse, because we had developed just the teeniest distrust for Mr Perkins, because the forecast said “sensible people might consider staying one more day”, or whether it was just that we were returning to the scene of last year’s somewhat life-changing mishap.   

Whatever the case, we were both experiencing it.   The weather did promise improvement, but by the time that happened the tide and wind would be against us, so we called our friend Rob, the harbour master in Dordrecht just to make sure that if the conditions were terrible when we arrived, that help to berth would be at hand.

With his assurance and our magical electronic device to give us at least some warning of ships approaching beyond our visual range, we gave Mr P the final veto.

He confirmed with gusto that he was relishing the prospect of the day ahead. What could be better he seemed to be asking, than a day spent being overrun by ships travelling at twice our speed and appearing from nowhere as the squalls moved around us?

We made it of course, remarkably uneventfully, with those tummy-knots still in place even after safely securing ourselves on the second go, with the considerable assistance of Chris and Anne and a few other onlookers.

Surprisingly, it may take a day or two for the reality of us being here to sink in.   We are back where we left off, just a few weeks shy of twelve months from when our travels were so rudely and unexpectedly interrupted.