Tuesday 1st & Wednesday 2nd June 2004 Nieuweschans to Nieuwe Statenzijl.

Tuesday 1st June 2004 Nieuweschans to Nieuwe Statenzijl.

Fog! It cleared by 8.30 a.m. Sunny spells and grey clouds. Bill fetched a loaf for Mike from the Co-op before we set off at 9.30 a.m. (as arranged with the bridge keeper the day before). The keeper swung the road bridge on the dot of 9.30 a.m. and went off in his car to swing the railway bridge, a distance of some 200m further downstream. A very large cruiser, called

Clouds over the Dollard

Laesø, was moored by a brick built silo between the bridges. Beyond the railway bridge there was a small boatyard and a line of moored boats and houseboats, at the end of which there was a small old Luxemotor quietly rusting away. It was only 6 kms to the end of the navigation and the lock on to the Dollard at Nieuwe Statenzijl. The waterway was a typical of a former estuary, flat lands, rocks along the edges, cleaner water and wheeling gulls. We tied up at a piled quay wall below the sea lock at 10.30 a.m. The liftbridge across the top end of the lock lifted and the lock started emptying shortly afterwards. (Boats drop down off the sea, this is Holland!)

Horses and sea birds on the sea dijk

A woman came to ask us to move up, as we were occupying the mooring belonging to the boat which had just come down the lock, an ex-police launch. He normally moors in the middle of the quay! She spoke no English, so Mike couldn’t get an answer to the question “Why the middle?” We moved towards the lock and the smiling, cheery, crew tied nearer the end than they normally did, but were quite happy about it. After lunch we went out in the car to collect our post from Middelstum, leaving Bill to continue his woodwork. Once we’d collected the post Mike decided to find a library to check and see if he had actually managed to register for e-mail with Yahoo. We located the library in Appingedam and found that he had successfully registered with Yahoo and he sent a test e-mail to Glyn. Back to the boat.

Wednesday 2nd June 2004 Nieuwe Statenzijl.

A ship far out on the sea

11.8° C overnight, sunny and warm, the wind picked up around 5 p.m. blowing down the river off the sea. My birthday. Opened my cards and read letters from Hans, George and Helen (both letters dated 21st April) and one from Yvonne from almost a month ago. Helen said Jim McD had unloaded his boat in Gent and was off to Berlin  - we hadn’t seen him! (Found out later that he had crossed the Dollard to get on to the river Ems and had done all the small semi-tidal waterways of north Germany) Yvonne also said that members of S&WCS, on a visit to Belgium, had seen his boat in Gent but no one was home at the time. 

A nosey sheep.

Lunch, then we all went out to get some shopping done in Winschoten, groceries from AH, then a session in the library (dear at 1,00 Euro for 15 min, twice the price of other libraries). Mike and I checked the e-mails on Yahoo, Glyn had sent back “Good gracious!” so I sent him one to say we’d got the post, but we’d not had the info he’d got for us from PangIT. We hadn’t got the info with us to do the registration with World Wide Telecom, so I had a look at the website Bill had been looking at - Joseph Banks the botanist with Captain Cook, material held at the library of New South Wales. Isn’t this Internet wonderful, ask any question, look up anything – better than the best encyclopaedias or reference books, it’s all of those rolled into one. Back to the boat. Bill couldn’t find his keys and reckoned the last time he’d seen them was when he handed them over, with his bonus card attached to the keyring, to the checkout assistant in AH! Mike offered to take him back to Winschoten to get them, but he said next day would be fine. It was too windy for a BBQ. Mike went for a nap while I cooked Kashmiri chicken with mushrooms for dinner. 

Note: If you take a look at the Google map on satellite view it looks like the photos were taken when the tide was out and just a short way north of the lock at Statenzijl the Dollard is one big sandbank.