Yesterday, when we told the nice Harbour Master that we might move on to Tholen today, he warned us that everything there would be closed so there’s not really much point. Then he confessed that nothing would be open in Yerseke either, (except for the church and perhaps a cafe or two) so we had a clear choice of moving to somewhere where we could do nothing, or simply doing nothing.
Common sense prevailed.
Exercise is often overrated, but after a long day lolling around inside a ten metre boat, the lack of it does begin to weigh on one’s conscience, so late in the afternoon we thought we’d take a turn around the town known as the “Oyster and Mussel Capital of the Netherlands”.
Had we not done so, we may not have known that Oyster farming was invented in China three thousand years ago, the Romans refined it or did whatever they did to it 400 years ago, but as with many of their good ideas, when they left town, the instructions were lost. Sometime in the mid nineteenth century a French chap thought it might be a good idea and that prompted a fellow from this very town to give it a go as well, and that apparently was that; the beginning of a very long and presumably fruitful relationship between this town and the Mollusc family.
Everything was closed exactly as was promised of course, so we contented ourselves with not visiting the museum, nor sampling any of the wares of the many empty restaurants overhanging the ancient ponds. The juxtaposition of fine dining and oyster farming seemed odd at first glance, but then we noticed that the farms, which are of necessity industrial in character and not exactly the sort of thing that would top one’s list of scenic attractions, in a certain light, with one’s head tilted in a particular direction, reflected one of the great fashion colours of today.
American Flag Oyster Farm Blue.
