Thursday 3rd June 2004 Nieuwe Statenzijl.
11° C sunny and warm with a gentle breeze. Mike took Bill
back to Winschoten and retrieved his keys, then they went in Praxis (a DIY
shop). They found that the library didn’t open until 1.30 p.m. so they went to
find (eventually) the library in Nieuweschans, which opened at 2.30 p.m. they were
back at midday. I’d finished all the chores and I’d almost finished mending my
handbag, polishing the wax on the leather and stitching the lining back
together, whilst sitting out on the front deck in the sunshine with the
canvases as a windbreak. After lunch, Mike went for nap until 2.00 p.m. then
took Bill with him to find the library in Nieuweschans to check on the
internet. When Mike returned he’d got a printout of the info from Glyn’s e-mail
and had sent one off to PangIT asking for more precise details of their costs.
The library had only one terminal, so when they’d received Glyn’s message and
printed it they went and sat in the car to digest it. When they went back into
the library to send the reply they had to wait as someone else was using the
Internet. As the weather was better we decided to have a BBQ. I turned some
minced pork and beef into Thai sausages and ordinary burgers. Bill had bought a
new folding chair - he told the young lady who sold it to him that he would
think of her when he sits in it, but he said he doubts if she will be thinking
of him! Violins out! I sat on the front deck and had one of Mike’s bottles of
Grolsch with some lime. After we’d finished eating (Mike said it was the worst
BBQ’d food he’d ever done, as the burgers dropped to bits and the sausages
charcoaled too easily - I thought it tasted OK) we had visitors - the bloke who
owned the tjalk moored round the corner in the layby below the lock, (a
Dutchman from Amsterdam), and his friends from Frankfurt (on the Maine in west
Germany) who were visiting him and they all came over to look at our funny boats.
Bill showed them some photos of working boats and I dug out a book of black and
white photos of old boats. At 9.00 p.m. we packed up the BBQ gear and went
inside as it was getting decidedly chilly.
Friday 4th June 2004 Nieuwe Statenzijl to “De Dellen”.
Raining and misty from low flying
rain clouds when we set off at 9 a.m. 11° C overnight, only
12° C when we set
off. Mike had booked the bridges for ten, otherwise we wouldn’t have moved! He
said he thought about ‘phoning and cancelling, but the forecast said it would brighten
up later - which it did. I made a cuppa as we ran back into Nieuweschans. The
keeper was there, he arrived as we did at 9.55 a.m. We had to wait for a train
at 10.10 a.m. then he let us through the rail bridge and he cycled up to the
road bridge in the drizzle. Mike asked him, as we passed through his bridge,
what else he did when he wasn’t swinging bridges. The reply came back “It’s a
very good job - nothing!” We supposed it could get a bit hectic at the height
of the summer holiday season. The mooring staging was exactly as when we left
it, with the two old boats plus the three little cruisers moored at the ends.
We cleared the high liftbridge and the motorway bridge, leaving Nieuweschans
behind at 10.30 a.m. The drizzle stopped, but there were still lots of low
hanging clouds until lunchtime. It was chilly, so I made a cup of soup before
we got to the first bridge. I got off and worked the key operated, fully
automatic liftbridge, Ulsderbrug at Klein Ulsda. The mooring was very awkward
for getting on and off to do the bridge, Bill would have had a lot of trouble
with it. I only stopped five cars! Bill took Rosy through and went on to the
lock at Bulsterverlaat. The lock was empty with red lights on and the bottom
end gates open. Bill went in, missing the push button to set the lock. It was
hidden among the stumps on the steigers. I pressed it as we went in, then
pulled the cord to set the lock working - no key needed for the working of the
lock. Now we were back on the Winschoterdiep. The railway bridge keeper had
just started his two hour lunch break when we arrived there at 12.30 p.m. so we
tied to the steigers and had some lunch ourselves. Two trains, blue and yellow
two car diesel units, went past, one up one down, just after we’d tied up.
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| Liftbridge in Nieuweschans - photo by Gouwenaar |
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| Eexterbrug Scheemda - photo by LeRoc |
Two
cruisers arrived on the opposite side of the bridge, and two more came from
behind us, to wait for the bridge to open at 2.00 p.m. As soon as we were
through the bridge Mike wound up the speed to keep up with the cruisers to get
through the liftbridges with them, as the bridges were worked for us by a
roving keeper. The first bridge was Beertsterbrug, then the busy road bridge
into Winschoten, then Kloosterbrug - lifting the latter stopped lots of traffic
including vehicles on the motorway exit ramp. The keeper went on in his white
waterways’ car to work the next bridge, Graaf Adolfbrug. We all went through
and one of the two cruisers turned left into a small arm where there was a
landing stage for mooring by the old Eextahaven. We went through Eexterbrug, on
the outskirts of the town of Scheemda, then turned right for the
Termunsterzijldiep, following another cruiser which had just turned into the
navigation from the opposite direction. A sharp right turn beyond the bridge
took us into a small channel edged with timber piling on both banks. We passed
a small off line marina and lots of moored boats along the banks. The cruiser
in front of us had also tied up. The canal did an acute left turn, leading to a
lock (Schutsluis Scheemda), but the way was blocked by a liftbridge, so I got
off to lift it, hoping our key would work on this waterway, which was a new one
to us. It did. The control buttons were different, these had to be pressed and
held. The boats went through and Mike and Bill moored above the lock while I
lowered the bridge. We all had a look at the lock working panel, which was set
in a large control box. There was a great deal of written instructions, but
only four buttons. Three green ones and a red one for emergency.
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| Schutsluis at Scheemda - photo by Krok69 |
The lock - a
deep one, two metres drop! - was empty with the bottom gates open. We pressed
the bottom end button, the hydraulic power pack started up, the bells sounded
(which brought out all the locals to watch the performance - we were surrounded
by houses) then nothing else happened, so Bill pressed the next button in line
which moved the gates. He had to keep his finger in the button until the gates
were fully closed. The next sequence was automatic, the paddles lifted and filled
the lock, then the bells sounded again, the top end gates opened and the men
went to move the boats into the chamber. Meanwhile two children who had been
playing in a dinghy came to throw sticks for Fanny and chatter nonstop to us in
Dutch. Their father was on the lockside and he told the little boy what to say
in English - he wanted to know where we were from. As the water level dropped
there were lots of small crabs sitting on the bollards inset in the lock walls.
Mike called me to look at one, but he couldn’t catch them as they were falling
off and dropping back into the water. I couldn’t understand a word the little
girl said, but that made no difference, she continued to chatter and I spoke
back to her in English! Fanny understood everything and collected the stick for
her every time. When the lock was almost empty, Bill called Fanny to cross the
lock gates and she jumped down on the roof of the boat. A man on the lockside
spoke to me as I retrieved my key. When I climbed down the ladder and got back
on the boat, Bill asked me if I’d recognised our bridge keeper from the
Winschoterdiep. I hadn’t - he was just getting into the white waterways’ car
and driving off, he must have come to have a closer look at the boats. The
canal below the lock was very narrow and shallow. We followed Rosy out of the
lock, immediately we were out of the town and the channel was about a metre and
a half below the level of the wide open windswept fields. Bill stopped and
operated the first bridge, a liftbridge called Zaagsterklap, carrying a busy
road. I could see through binoculars that the control panel had got a double
row of six buttons and lights. That looked complicated! Bill got the bridge up,
then moved Rosy through, we followed and went on to the next bridge while he
lowered it again. A queue of traffic soon formed and a gaggle of bikers
arrived, one of whom gave Bill a hand with interpreting the labels.
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| "De Dellen" windmill - photo by LeRoc |
He later
said that the main problem he had with working the bridge was that there was a
loose electrical connection and that the biker who helped him had wiggled the
key, which made contact and the bridge lowered! The bridge I got was a swing
bridge, Tichelwaarksdraai, which lead into a small factory (which looked to be
on holiday) and was easy to work. Bill stemmed up, the wind was blowing hard
from our left, then went past after Mike had called him on. I had a bit of
difficulty getting my key back. Mike came and used a bit of force on it, saying
it was my weak wrists at fault again. Under the A7 motorway and on through
fields almost on eye-level. Bill had tied up on the wooden steigers with
gangways to the bank, next to an old windmill called “De Dellen” by a
farmhouse. There was enough room for the two boats - Bill had his bows
overhanging a bit - but the gangways to the bank weren’t in the right places
making it difficult for the dog to get on and off. It was OK for overnight. It
was 5.15 p.m. when we tied up. Mike said earlier that he was going to leave the
car at Nieuwe Statenzijl until the next day. While we were tidying up I dropped
my best coffee mug, which bounced on the horizontal wooden baulk of the steiger
and went in the water. Mike found it after ten minutes digging around with a
boat hook, but it had suffered a bashing and was too badly cracked for use. I’d
had that mug since we were in Germany. We recycled it to use for drainage in
plantpots - I’d got some chives and parsley which were sprouting well and would
soon need repotting. Shortly after we’d tied up a cruiser went past - and we’d
just been saying that there wouldn’t be much passing traffic here! I cooked
chicken in saté sauce to go with the left over cold rice salad from yesterday’s
BBQ. I did some knitting - a doormat I started making some time ago from hemp
string (couldn’t get one the right size for our front door step which is a storage
box for electric cables).
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