Saturday 6th August 2005 Middelstum to Oldenzijl.

Leaving the mooring at Middelstum

10.7º C overnight. After rain in the night it was sunny, but with a cold wind. We went out in the car first thing to get fuel, petrol for the gennie and diesel for the car, then called in a Plus supermarket in the village for bread and cheese, etc. When the bridge opened at 10.15 a.m. we set off, heading north on the Boterdiep. It was still cold with the wind blowing, so Mike kept the coal fire going all day. The channel was narrow and the banks built up with gabions (rocks in wire mesh baskets) below the road through the village of Kantens, past a tall

Grote Geert windmill in Kantens

windmill called Grote Geert. The canal did a sharp right turn, with a canoe route off to the left called the Koksmaar, and we passed two moored houseboats (which had seen better days) in the middle of nowhere. A young man stepped off the one that looked inhabited with a dog at his heels – hippies! He said hello as we passed by. We arrived at the swingbridge at Doodstil (the village sign said the “mooiest plaatsnaame” - the most beautiful place name in the Netherlands - it means dead calm) at 11.35 a.m. No one around, so we dropped a rope on the posts by the bridge. An old chap with a camera arrived to chat and take photos. At 11.45 a.m. two waterways men came with a couple of cruisers on their way back down the canal from Uithuizen (where the Boterdiep finishes). As we went through the bridge Mike told the bridge workers that we weren’t going into the town, we were going up to Oldenzil, but one of them still cycled on to the liftbridge going in the direction of Uithizen. He went away again when we did a

Rosy in the reeds in the narrow channel of the Uithuizermeester

sharp right turn into the Uithuizermeester, a very narrow channel between high banks of reeds. The course of the former river twisted and turned, ducked under several fixed footbridges and a roadbridge and after 6.5 kms we arrived in Oldenzijl, the end of the navigation, where an unattended liftbridge barred the way. Mike tried winding with the bows in a ditch at the end of someone’s garden, but the boat was just about two metres too long. We gave up and backed off for Bill to have a go. He couldn’t get Rosy round either, so we both moored next to an old low quay wall and decided we’d have to reverse

Reeds and a winding channel - Uithuizermeester

next day to a place about a kilometre back down the navigation where we might be able to wind. We’d stirred the bottom up quite well and the water had turned from peaty brown to inky black, sending up the most malodorous pong imaginable. We’d arrived at 1 p.m but it was 1.45 p.m. by the time we’d tied up. Mike said we’d leave the car where it was as we would be going back to Middlestum next day. We started making up the new mossie net strip curtain for the front door. In the middle of

Moored at Paapstilbrug

doing that a small (15m) unconverted (except for an engine in its hold) masted tjalk arrived with a crowd of people who leapt off on to the bank behind us and proceeded to hammer out the wedges on the bridge deck and wind up Paapstil liftbridge with two hefty blokes swinging on the windlass to operate it. They took the boat through, some of the youths climbed the bridge deck whilst hanging on to the side railings, and then wound the bridge back down again and never said a word to us, didn’t even look in our direction - we might have been invisible! Not even a wave. Back to work on

Tjalk going through the bridge.

the curtain, except a lady arrived on the quay and engaged Mike and Bill in conversation. She invited us to go to her house for a drink. OK. Half an hour later her husband arrived in his car to pick us up and we had a very entertaining time with two journalists who had been all over the world.