contentedsouls

16 kms, 4 LBs. 44kms 3 locks.

We originally moored up for the day at Loenon but, by the time we’d had lunch and sorted out washing, we discovered that we were going to be charged .75 euros per metre for no facilities. So we moved on. It is perfectly acceptable to pull into towns for free and use shops and restaurants; but if you stay near a town after 5pm you are very likely to get charged. The next 3 moorings were just post and rail fencing with no shore access; but at the 4th we were lucky and found a lovely mooring where we stayed for free for 4 nights whilst we waited for the right wind speed and direction to cross the Markemeer onto the polder (‘man made land’) of the province of Flevoland.

A very affluent area – in fact all of the NLs seems very affluent and boating, particularly on a sunny day, seems to be it’s major leisure activity.

By Wednesday we had a wind onto the bow at 14 kph, so I stowed the crystal and removed mirrors and anything precious that might jump off of shelves or walls and we went for it. The Markemeer is a huge inland freshwater lake which has been reclaimed from the sea – freshwater it may have been, but it still looked like sea to me!!!

All was good until we had to turn across the wind into the canal and boy did we roll. Pitching is fun; rolling is very, very bad. Muttley hid under the bed as all hell broke loose inside the boat. Fortunately it was only a matter of a few minutes.