Meandering on terra firma

It's been a busy few weeks, but there's not much to write about really. I've been wrapping up courses and this coming week, I'm in for a spate of examining with my Cambridge ESL hat on. I do the speaking tests, and not all the written parts, for which I'm grateful.

My course with the Syrian refugees is also over. They were a truly lovely bunch and I became very fond of many of them. The only problem was that halfway through the course, it became apparent that many of them would not be studying in English at all, so there seemed little point in their continuing. As a result, I lost a number of them in quick succession. I just hope they get to study what they want in future and all go on to do well. It was a privilege to get to know them.

On Thursday, I had a full day's painting on the Vereeniging, which was wise as it rained during the night and also on Friday. I'm very glad I've made a good start and painted all the red trim round the roef, and the engine room. I also managed to freshen up the red stripe round the whole barge. It's called the boeisel in Dutch, but I don't know what it is in English. Does anyone know?

The red strip, the boeisel in Dutch, but in English?

This weekend, though, I've been taking it a bit easier as a result of having less marking to do and being a bit tired after my activities during the week, so it's been time for some good walks. We are so lucky at the crumbly cottage; it is a beautiful area with plenty of nature reserves, so walks are easy to find and there is rarely anyone else about.

Below is a selection of a few photos I took with my phone of this weekend's rambles. Koos took the top two of the enchanting piglets we saw today when we walked through an area of forestry smallholdings just across the border in Belgium. It was such a lovely discovery I'm sure we'll go back there again.

Tiny tiny piglets, no bigger than a handful. So cute!

Mummy pigs, still pretty small, aren't they? 

Below the dyke along the great sea canal

For the birds: a nature reserve dedicated to water birds not far from
the crumbly cottage

A working harbour on the sea canal

Not such a good photo, but I loved the sunlight dappled on the road

A misty morning on another nature reserve nearby

Stark contrasts across the polders. I love this landscape

See how empty it is? In other parts of the country, the lanes would be teeming with walkers and cyclists, so we are doubly fortunate that we have so many natural areas but so few people to share them with. I'm becoming quite the misanthropist as I get older, but then maybe that's because I see so many people during the week. For me, this is bliss!!

Have a good week allemaal! Where are your favourite spots to take a walk?

January in the flatlands

Here we are already halfway through January and I haven't posted anything about the start of the year or what's been happening. Well, briefly, not a lot!

I can sum up the year's events so far in three sentences: I've finished writing my travelogue and it's now out with Beta readers as my aim is to publish it next month as a Kindle book; teaching work has started, but very slowly so we (that's Koos and I) are filling in my gaps by redecorating the crumbly cottage; we've been for lots of lovely walks and most notably our traditional New Year's trek across the beach.

This year we went to Cadzand in Zeeuws Vlaanderen, so my traditional photos with dogs and people frolicking on the sands are below.

 And these next photos are from our walks around the crumbly cottage when the sun has shone. As they say on the weather forecast, sunny intervals, and as intervals have gone, they've been just about long enough for a brisk 4kms and then it's been a case of diving inside before the sleet and hail has hit again.

My aims for the coming months are a bit more extensive: I want to finish the South African novel I started about a year ago and which was interrupted by all sorts of other commitments. I still have no real idea where it's going, but I keep writing in the hopes that a pattern and a good story will emerge from the jumble of half formed plans that I keep mentally sifting through. I then want to start on my WWII novel.

In the meantime, we have to prepare our Hennie H for going to Poland. That is the big plan for this year, and we hope to spend about four months travelling. I'm both very excited and rather nervous about it as not being the youngest of couples, I don't want to go anywhere too far from civilisation in case something happens to either of us. We will need to plan our route very carefully.

In between all this, I would like to go to Italy and to the UK again to see friends, although these are likely to be long weekends if they happen. However, I am definitely going to Spain for a weekend in two weeks, but more on that later. Last but not least, I have to finish renovating my back cabin on the Vereeniging, but I'll wait until it's just a bit warmer to do that!