contentedsouls

We arrived at the fabulous village of Aldeboarn in time for the school children’s leaving ‘do’s’. Needless to say, with the usual Dutch passion for water, this involved boats and making sure as many people as possible got very wet as the kids doused everyone with water pistols and anything else they could lay their hands on. We quickly managed to get revenge for our soaking by plugging in our deck hose and drowning the lot of them. This could have backfired on us badly, being mere visitors and British at that, but it actually had the reverse effect and endeared us to the villagers who went out of their way to help us thereafter. It also made lifetime friends of Gerrit & Gezina whose house we were moored outside at the time (hereafter referred to as G & G).

We loved this little village and ended up returning to pick Sarah and Andy up here; leaving their car at G & G’s. In fact, we returned here more than once. A quirky little place with a nice little bar, small supermarket and second hand shop.

Once we collected Sarah and Andy, we were off on long daily cruises. Trying to ring the changes with big lakes and smaller canals. The trouble with long cruising days at the height of the holiday season is that, by the time we could prise Sarah off of the wheel, most of the ‘favourite’ moorings had been taken (no Sarah, we are not cruising through the night – this is not the BCN challenge). None of our stops were shoddy though.

At one point Sarah reckoned that she saw more boats in one day than she had seen in most of her life. As always our time together flew passed, but I think they both left having thoroughly enjoyed a bit of pirating in the Netherlands.

The only downside was that they informed us that they had been to check out MR on our behalf and that the boatyard she had been brokered with wasn’t doing MR or us  any favours – I will not say more on here. A recovery plan was quickly hatched for a couple of weeks on.