Heat waves and harbour ways

Most of my readers here know that I lived in South Africa for nigh on twenty years and also that I loved the climate there. It might surprise you, then, to read this admission: the heat of a European summer can be hard to endure. The thing is, South Africa, or specifically Johannesburg, had a very stable climate; it was cold, dry and sunny in the winter with practically no rain, and hot, dry and sunny in the summer. Winter was often frosty but rarely snowy, while summer days were generally punctuated by an afternoon thunderstorm around 4 p.m., following which the sun would return and everything dried up leaving a freshness that invigorated us all. And yes, it really was that predictable most of the time. I'm not sure about these days as the climate patterns have undoubtedly changed, but the stability and regularity of the weather is something I remember with fondness. For me, it was the best climate I'd ever experienced.

Here in the Netherlands, things are much less certain. April, typically known for showers, was, this year, cold but dry and bright. May, which I'd mostly regard as being the lead-in to summer, was plain miserable until late in the month, when things changed dramatically. Since then, we've had two very hot, extremely humid spells and, like most of the region, we're experiencing one now. And surprisingly, at 30+ºC it's hotter and considerably more humid here than it generally was in Johannesburg, where the average summer temperature used to be around 26ºC; hence the hard to endure remark.

I love summer weather, but I have to confess I'd rather it stayed outside and didn't make the house or the boat so stifling. Zoe suffers too, which is even more of an issue.

Anyway, what else is new? Well, last Sunday we went to Middelburg, the Zeeland provincial capital to see what their harbour festival had to offer. Middelburg is an enchanting town with beautiful traditional Dutch houses and gorgeous back streets that look like something from a fairytale.

The harbour was busy with boats of all types and ages, but I was slightly disappointed there weren't more historic ships and barges. I think perhaps we'd missed the best of those on the Saturday. All the same, it was fun, lively and a popular event judging by the crowds of people attending. Here's a short video I made of the harbour: 

And here are some other photos I took around the backstreets of Middelburg. It is, I feel, a place where people live very graciously. It's totally unpretentious, but in many ways, the town exudes the confidence of a population sure of its place and history:

Beautiful Dutch town houses all in a row, row, row!

Along a sidearm to the main canal

A wonderful view of the city's church

I love the random way in which plants are 
allowed to simply grow wherever they may.

Bicycles and hollyhocks growing through
the paving.
How Dutch can you get?

Three lovely tjalks in a row, row, row.

Looking down the route from or to Vlissingen

A former neighbour from our own harbour

Lots of lovely old saling fishing boats.

At the end of the festival harbour

Another lovely collection of potted plants
adorning the street

The door of a stunning art nouveau building
hidden in the backstreets of Middelburg

Higher up this lovely Art Nouveau building

No garden? We'll do pots then!

I hope you enjoy these images from our lovely capital, allemaal,  and when the temperature drops a bit, and I have more energy, I'll fill you in with the rest of my doings. For now, enjoy your week and wishing you temperate temperature wherever you are!

Village Vending and Vintage vehicles

Life isn't all about boats down here in Zeeland, although you'd be forgiven for believing that's mostly what I think about, which is proabably true.

Anyway, I'm pleased to say that there are subjects which will distract me from them on occasions and one of these is our annual village festival. The Dyke Party, as I will call it, starts on Friday evening and goes  on until Sunday afternoon. During this time, we have a garage sale, a vintage car tour, an art fair and live music performed by local bands specialising in covers of popular rock music. And, of course, there's a beer tent and food provided by our local Spar.

It's very jolly and always well attended. Those participating in the Garage Sale set tables up outside their houses and display all the second-hand goods they hope to dispose of for a few euros. We pay €5 to be on the official garage sale route so that interested shoppers can get a map showing all the participating houses. Ours was the last one in the village, but that didn't stop us from having a steady stream of interested purchasers. It's always good for clearing out the cupboards, but some items are definitely more popular than others. Vinyl LPs, for instance, are hot sellers. We managed to sell almost all of ours. It was pretty hard to see them go but we realised we haven't played records in years. In fact, we don't even have a turntable. So, like everything we don't use anymore, it seemed pointless to keep them even though many of the older albums were part of our history. 

Cameras, however, don't sell at all.  Between Koos and I, we have quite a collection of old but excellent digital cameras that we'd love to find homes for, but no one showed any interest in them. I even have two lovely little analogue Olympus Trip 35mm cameras that you'd think someone might want for a collection, but not one person gave them even a passing glance. There's no accounting, is there?

Also on the vending front, but of a higher and newer quality was the art fair. I was a proud mum when I saw daughter #1's display of paintings she had put together. As a themed set inspired by her trips to the Isle of Skye in Scotland, they were captivating and she not only sold four of them but also generated tremendous interest with her evident passion for Scotland and its scenery

Across the aisle from Jo's table was one displaying equally beautiful ceramic work. It was crafted by a lovely lady in the village who I first met when I went to the optician for some new glasses a couple of years ago. I didn't know then that she was such a talented potter, or that she had her own kiln at home. If you look to the left of the photo below, you might see bowl at the back of the table that looks like an upturned mushroom with a green glaze. I loved it so much I bought it and am so pleased I could support someone local as well as have a piece of ceramic art that I  can cherish.

As you can see from the photo below, though, the work on display was extensive and most of it was high quality. Our village has an unusually high proportion of artists among its residents, and many of them were represented at the fair, although there were others from elsewhere too.

My other favourite attraction was the vintage car collection, which is always impressive. However, I have to admit I got stuck gazing at these two beauties and the 2CV below them. Karmann Ghias and VW Beetles are my absolute favourite cars and these two were really stunningly restored.

As for this little Citroën duckling, its colours are something else and probably not original, but isn't it lovely? Thanks to Koos for the photo, which is lovely too.

I didn't go to the live music, given my general aversion to crowds. I'd already had my fill of mingling for one day, but we could hear the band from some distance away and they were giving a pretty convincing rendition of some good classic rock and roll.

By Sunday night, our village streets had resumed their usual quiet where the noisiest occupants were the jackdaws, pigeons and blackbirds. The annual festival is great but I'll take the peace any day, as well as the opportunity to sit by the Kreek (creek) and watch the ducks like daughter Jo here below.

 Enjoy the rest of your week allemaal and I'll hopefully be back with more boaty progress next time – that's if the rain decides to give us a break!

From the woollies and fires to decks you could fry an egg on

The photo below was taken on May the 20th when the Kogge I wrote about in my last post came to the harbour. When we went to visit it, we were wearing jerseys and coats and that evening we lit the fire it was so cold. Well, the next day everything changed, quite dramatically.

Suddenly, the cold air turned to warm, the wind wafted in from the south instead of the north, the sun came out and the world around us decided it was summer.  By the weekend, we were sweltering. Woollies went back in the cupboard and I had to rummage in the depth of my tee-shirt drawer for the colourful short-sleeved ones I'd put away last September. 

I love warm weather, but this sudden switch from cold to hot was a bit of a shock to our systems and the rhythms of our life. All of a sudden, I've been having to get up early to walk Zoe and do jobs outside before the heat makes it difficult. Having had a salutary lesson about skin cancer quite recently, I have become a bit less blasé about working long hours in the full sun. That said, daughter #1 took advantage of my little garden to do some en plein air sketching. I loved the results, which you might just be able to see if you click on the picture.

Better late than never, too, the poppies have exploded with such profusion it's quite glorious. The previous week there'd just been a smattering of them, but now they are everywhere in profuse abundance. I adore poppies, so I always take photos of them. The trouble is, it's never easy to tell which year is which when I browse through my poppy pics later on, but I think I'll recognise this year's; it's such a bumper crop!

Poppies apart, the great panel job is progressing slowly. The downside of boat work is that the window of opportunity is always so small when you have nowhere to escape, scrape and paint under cover. It's a question of doing what you can when the weather gods permit. This week, we've managed to replace two panels, which is a major advance on the previous efforts when we only managed one due to the incessant rain. Even so, we could have done more had it not been quite so hot. I know. I'm never satisfied, but some transition between arctic and tropical would have been nice.

Panel removed. That's the easy part.

Daughter 1 assisting with the placing of the new panel today.
For most of this operation we were both in the boat!

"Licensed to drill," so quipped my girl :)

Another member of the family who prefers the cooler temps is Zoe. The heat exhausts her, especially as her coat grows so fast in summer too. The thing is, she doesn't lose much hair and even though she moults a little, it's not enough to get rid of her dense curls. I trimmed her quite substantially a little over a week ago, but it's already grown since then. Walks are now early in the morning and after dinner in the evening, but for the time in between she mostly resembles a rather plush furry rug. 

Someone is finished by the heat.

But then things will probably change again soon if the forecast is to be believed, so no doubt I'll be giving you an update from a rains-soaked Rotterdam, which is where I have to go next week. Have a good weekend allemaal and enjoy whatever the season is bringing you!

Replicas reap their own rewards

Today, we had an interesting visitor in our historic harbour in Sas van Gent where Vereeniging has her mooring. This particular visitor is not, strictly speaking, historic in the real sense, but is a replica of a very much older vessel. De Kamper Kogge is a wooden sailing ship built on the pattern of a 14th century original that was found wrecked and buried in the Flevopolder (see Flevoland on a map of the Netherlands), presumably when it was drained. A kogge was a ship built to transport goods and was introduced by a hanze, being a cooperative of traders during the middle ages (remember the Hanseatic League from your school history lessons?). Several cities on the Baltic Sea, as well as the Dutch Hanseatic city of Harderwijk, carry a kogge in the city coat of arms.  The design, interestingly was inspired by Viking ships.

The original kogge was found near Nijkerk at the bottom of
this map

This kogge took four years to build as a reconstruction. It was completed in 1998 and is used today to demonstrate what these ancient vessels were like. The Kamper Kogge travels around the country as a 'faring' museum exhibit and this year, our historic harbour has been honoured with a visit.

Since, for my sins, I am the secretary of our harbour committee, I felt duty and honour bound to go along and see it. Luckily for me, Koos was also keen because when we arrived with Zoe in tow, we found there were dozens of people flocking to the spot where it was moored along our quayside. I am not a fan of crowds, so it was Koos who braved the throngs to go on board and take a look.

Despite not being all that old as replicas go, the ship exudes the atmosphere of an ancient craft. Its planking is thick, heavy, dark wood and its shape distinctly bath shaped, but for all that, it is beautiful in its way with its sharp prow and stern. What impressed me most of all, though, was the keen interest so many local people were showing in it.  This enthusiasm certainly gives us hope that the heritage and culture of the Dutch waterways still matters to more than a handful of eccentrics like us.

Anyway, that's it for this week, allemaal! I hope you like the photos and I'll be back with some more news and views from our corner of the Netherlands soon.

Throngs of visitors both on board and waiting

Our chairman on the quayside chatting to someone on board

A useful information board for the visitors

I'm not sure what you'd call this crenellated
cubicle mounted at the stern, but I'm guessing
it was for the tillerman*

The Kamper Kogge at her bow

And again at her stern

The usual residents of the harbour

Looking across to the kogge from Vereeniging

 *See the comment from Shirley Read-Jahn below with reference to the crenellations.

Getting decked out

Since I came back from France, it's been fairly full on with both work and, well, other work. The work work is routine, but it keeps me pretty busy. The upside of it is I can do it anywhere, and if the course doesn't involve real time Zoom or Teams sessions, I can also work at a time of day that suits me. With the days growing longer and just a matter of weeks until the summer solstice, this flexibility gives me the possibility to work on my barge, weather permitting, of course.

That being the case, it was some months ago when daughter #1, Jodie, committed to helping me for a week in May. We made plans; or rather she did. She's better at that than I am. We decided we were going to start replacing the wooden panels along the side of Vereeniging as they were rotting to the point of no recovery. I last replaced them about ten years ago, as I recall, but that's the thing with wood. No matter how much you prime, prepare and paint them, they inevitably deteriorate in such a wet climate.

It all started last Friday when we went west to the town of Oostburg to buy materials we couldn't seem to find closer to home. Oostburg is roughly 40 kms from our village and it has a substantial and well-stocked Gamma, the hardware store we mostly use. However, having loaded up the roof-rack with large sheets of rather light insulation, we noticed the wind had picked up so we decided to take the by-ways rather than the highways to get home – slower, we told ourselves, being the safer option.

This decision proved to be a blessing. Despite having bought two slats to act as support for the long sheets of insulation we'd bought, and even though we'd strapped it on well, it wasn't long before we noticed the insulation was flapping in the wind like huge birds ready to take off. We had to pull into a lay-by sharpish to prevent them from lifting off and away in a manner akin to a magic carpet. Luckily, we had a spare strap, so we looped it around the ends of the sheets at the front end of the car and tied them tightly to the wooden slats. Situation rescued, if not totally secured, we headed off again, but neither of us could help peering out of the window to keep an eye on our flighty purchases.

As it turned out, the back road we took was exceptionally pretty and I'm now sorry I was too worried about the safety of our load to think of taking photos. It was pastoral Holland at its burgeoning spring best and we enjoyed the trip when we weren't keeping an anxious eye on the roof.

On Saturday, however, we decided to postpone the start of the great panel job until we'd painted the decks, a job I'd not succeeded in doing last year and was much needed. Over the weekend, we both scraped, sanded and painted like dervishes because we knew that rain was forecast for Monday. Luckily, we managed it all, as the very pleasing results show below.

Scraping the flaking paint off was the first job

Then out came the sander and the extension cable

Here I am scraping the engine room

First stage: the roef or back cabin complete 

Doesn't it look nice?

Then came the engine room roof. Easier to paint because there’s less of it.

And finally, the foredeck, which was the biggest job of all

The foredeck in glorious close-up

Phase two has begun. We've removed one of the panels and cut its replacement, but it still needs prepping and painting. Rain has delayed the next step and both my able assistant and I have had to work today, so we're hoping to get on with it tomorrow. Fingers crossed that my next post will reveal a set of smart new panels, but nothing is guaranteed when we are at the mercy of the fickle Dutch seasons. Today, I spent the cold, wet morning marking assignments, but I did manage a few touch-up jobs on board this afternoon, which included some more prepping with anti-rust treatment, as well as hacking down , sorry, strimming the knee-high grass and nettles on and next to the path leading to my barge. 

However, the best, as they say, is yet to come, so I will provide more pics next time.

For now, allemaal, keep everything crossed for us that it doesn't rain for the rest of the week, and enjoy yours wherever you are.

Squeaking a second April post in

Yes, I admit it. This month has been beyond almost anything I've experienced in a long time, and I wish I could say it's been full of new sights, sounds and places, but I'm afraid not. My last post was two weeks ago already. I can't believe I still haven't sorted out my official license for the boating theory exam I took, but since then I've been immersed in some intensive work demands and I simply haven't had the time.

I won't go into details, as none of it is any more exciting or interesting than usual, but suffice to say it's kept my nose to the grindstone, so much so that I haven't been able to write or even read that much. Of course, being a freelancer, more work is good for my bank balance, and being in the famine and feast business, that's always a blessing; the problem is it just diverts me from other activities I might rather be doing.

Luckily, I enjoy my work and have no desire to stop yet. I love the interaction with my students; they keep my old grey cells working overtime with their constant enquiry and thirst for knowledge. Sometimes, it's a challenge that I wonder if I'm up to, and I always feel as if I learn more from them than they do from me, but I just wish I could live parallel lives. I would so like to spend more time on writing, for instance, but also on reading, working on my barge, visiting new places of interest, crocheting, painting and sewing. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to do everything I'd like to do, and still work. 

At the moment, Koos and I are in France, but I'll be returning to the Netherlands this weekend. When I haven't been working, we've been busy doing some renovations and sorting out the garden again. One issue we have in the CC Mark 2 is that there is a colony of bees living in one of the walls. As far as we can ascertain, they have been there for many years and none of our village neighbours appears to think there's anything strange in that. The problem is, though, that we'd like to paint the walls of the house and maybe even renovate the grenier the wall of which is currently very beezy (sorry). It's a bit of a dilemma really. While we don't want to upset the bees, their presence isn't condusive to either maintenance or repair. If anyone has any ideas on how to deal with these tenants of ours, suggestions will be gratefully received.

Once I'm back home in the Netherlands, there will be barge work on my agenda, which I will also enjoy, weather permitting, so watch this space for more news on that score. For now, here are a few photos of the glorious Haute-Marne during these beautiful spring days. It really is a stunning area at this lovely time of year.

A backstreet in Joinville. It doesn't look it
but this is on a very steep hill

And a little further up

Riverside bliss for residents and cyclists alike

Joinville water towers

Lovely common land in the village

The green swards behind the houses

A village backstreet. Note the table and chairs
outside. When you have no garden...

Zoe enjoying a walk along the canal towpath

Glorious chestnut trees in leaf again

The Marne back to its normal lazy flow after the raging torrent
it was six weeks ago.

Enjoy the lovely month of May, allemaal!