Knowing our boundaries, or rather our borders

As many of you know, the crumbly cottage is 'somewhere down south' in the Netherlands. In fact it's within squinting distance of the Belgian border and not all too far from my favourite city of Ghent. Although we can't see its gleaming, beckoning towers from our corner of the country, it's somewhere we're used to going quite regularly. So with the current lockdown and closure of the borders, we miss going into our favourite neighbouring country a lot.

The other day we did a bit of a drive around as a way of extending our horizons beyond the lake at the end of the field on the other side of the garden. Beautiful though it is, it's beginning to feel slightly samey. Anyway, to give the drive a purpose, we decided to inspect all the back roads we know that lead into Belgium. To our surprise, every one of them was barricaded with signs like the one in the photo below. 

How is it then, we wondered, that we see so many obviously Flemish cyclists speeding round our Dutch lanes? The Belgians like cycling in Holland because it's so much safer for two wheelers (or so I was told by some Belgians I met while waiting for a canal bridge to open). Even so, with lockdown closing every cross-border lane, it shouldn't be possible. The answer came when we found another lane with the same set up as the one in the photo, but which had been pulled open, probably by farming vehicles.

The thing is, in these areas it's almost impossible to keep the roads completely closed because they criss-cross the 'grens' (border) several times. The rural communities are obliged to follow these 'borderline' routes simply to get to and from their farms or homes. Add to that, there's the Belgians who live in Dutch villages and who go to work in Ghent and other towns in Flanders. It's all a bit too complicated to enforce complete closure, but they're doing their best. The main roads are policed and non-essential travellers are stopped, which is very odd to see after so many years of freedom of movement.

Anyway, on our short tour we had to turn around and retrace several steps to avoid any transgre(n)ssing (sorry 😏). Eventually, we managed to reach the pretty Dutch village of Philippine, where we unscrambled our brains by walking along this beautiful canal. Formerly a conduit right to the sea for fishing boats and goods too, it's now dammed up with no place to go and no boats to show. Its peaceful tree-lined way soon had us imagining we were back in Belgium again, on the Hennie H, and we reminisced about earlier travels on the Eeklo canal, just a few kilometres away. So near but yet so far.

And right by the canal on a dyke, we encountered this woolly crowd, totally ignoring the social distancing rules and enjoying the afternoon shade together. We tried to talk to them about their flagrant display of civil disobedience, but they just turned their backs on us. We couldn't blame them really.

We are now back in Rotterdam for the great Vereeniging lift out, which is due to happen on Wednesday morning. However, our friend, Murphy, has been at it again, and apparently today is the last fine day we'll have for the next two weeks... the precise two weeks of my hellingbeurt. Tomorrow, it will rain, and go on doing so for the foreseeable future. Well, I suppose the farmers will be happy, and so will the ducks, but I'll let you know how we fare in the good mood stakes. It's not what I was hoping for, I must admit.

Have a good week, allemaal and I'll post some pics of the Vereeniging's makeover as soon as possible.