Grey, overcast start to the
morning, but the sun came out by 10 a.m. and it started getting warmer. Bill
turned the key in the switch to empty the lock while we winded. Mike wished we
hadn’t bothered turning round as the edges were very muddy.
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| Monastery at Ter Apel - photo by FaceMePLS |
Up Sellingersluis.
I lifted the bridge, an easy one - turn the key, press one button for up and
one for down. The boats left the lock and I dropped the bridge back down. We
started off from the lock at 9.30 a.m. with the pins in and did some more
washing, the last load to catch up with the backlog. Bill was at Zuidveldsluis
first and turned the key to empty the lock. The top end gate closed, then
nothing else happened! And we’d only got two more locks to do!! Mike ‘phoned
the breakdown service again. We hovered below the lock. I did the ironing and
the washing finished too before the lock was working again. Bill volunteered to
do the bridge - a wind up and down one with locking manual road barriers. I got
off the boat to work the electrically operated swing bridge. The barriers had
to be dropped and locked manually, I turned the key and the bridge was unjacked
by hydraulics, then I had to swing it manually. Once the boats were through, I
swung the bridge closed, a plate on the end of the road deck matched up with a
sensor and the deck was jacked back up. A car had arrived by the house and was
waiting for the bridge to open. I opened the barriers at the far side of the
bridge, as the woman from the house by the bridge was explaining to the old
chap from the car that you can’t lift the barriers until the bridge has
finished lifting back level with the road. He was heaving on the pole but it
wouldn’t budge anyway until I’d lifted the locking catch, which was there to
stop impatient people trying to open it before the bridge was ready. Meanwhile
the woman fiddled with my key in the box and somehow the locking bar for the
catch sprang shut, which meant I couldn't fully lower the catch and lock the
barrier in its uphill position and, because the cycle hadn’t been completed, I
couldn’t get my key out of the control box. Damn! The woman called the bridge
fixing crew and I went to tell Mike we’d got a problem. Twenty minutes later
two men in a car arrived and released my key. It was midday. Bill was waiting
at the next bridge, Terwalslagerbrug. A swing bridge, but it wasn’t the same as
the one I’d just done, he had push buttons to swing the bridge deck - no
pushing required. We went through, Bill moved Rosy through, tied up and went
back to shut the bridge. The lock fixing team went past with their van with the
kebs on the roof. We waved. Bill called to say that he couldn’t get the bridge
to shut. Mike phoned the breakdown service - there was a different number for
bridges, but the chap who did the locks said he would call the bridge repairers
for us. Wonderful! What a day! And we thought it would only be a couple of
hours and we’d be tied up at Roelagebrug’s old wharf! We waited by Roelagebrug
until Bill arrived. The bridge fixers came to Bill’s rescue and then came to
work Roelagebrug for us too - we felt they didn’t trust us to work anything
else! While Bill had been waiting for the bridge fixers, he’d had a visit from
some people on bikes who were reconnoitring the canal. They’d been behind us in
Groningen they told him and had taken the other route to Ter Apel via the
Stadtskanaal, only to find that the route into Germany via the
Haren-Rüitenbrock kanal was blocked until around 20th June. We spoke to the
bridge fixing team, who said yes, the Germans were building a new lift bridge.
That’s a blow!
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| Windmill near Ter Apel - photo by Berend Bosch |
We tied up next to the old quay, which was still covered with
rusting farm machinery, backed by a new stable block and a horse paddock
covered with fine sand next to the house at the bridge. Mike went off to
collect the car and was soon back as it wasn’t far, then we all went into Ter
Apel in the car. First we went to locate the post office (it was inside a
stationers shop) for Bill’s post, it hadn’t arrived. Then we went into the VVV
shop and asked if there was a cybercafé in the town. Yes, in the new library
just around the corner. We went to have a look. They’d got eight computer
stations where Internet access cost 50c for 15 minutes. Next we did some
shopping in a new Edah supermarket. Finally we went to see if we could locate
the boaters Bill had spoken to the day before who were in the yacht haven.
There were quite a few boats in the yacht haven and we didn’t recognise any of
them as being the cruisers we had seen at Groningen. On our way back to the
boats we could see the big cruiser, Papillon, which was stuck on the bottom in
the middle of the canal below Ter Apelersluis. When we got back to Roeslagebrug
both our boats were on the bottom and listing well. First thing we had to do
was shove them off so that they were floating again. Rosy took some shoving out
- the bow ended up over two metres from the bank before it was floating! Mike
sank tyres down the sides of our boat, which slid under the bottom edge so we
wouldn’t ledge on the mud again. Mike set up the BBQ and sat outside cooking sausages
and Dutch speciality sausages wrapped with thin steak. Bill had bought a big
pack of burgers which Mike grilled and we shared. Bill had also got some very
dry sherry, which he asked if we’d like to try. Mike declined, preferring beer,
so I helped him empty a bottle while we ate our dinner. It was very dry sherry,
nice. After a lovely sunny warm day we had a beautiful sunset. This is more
like it, pity we’re going to be stuck here for a few days while they finish
fixing the route into Germany.
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