Day 6: Woudsend to Warkum

Day 6: Woudsend to Warkum

We awoke this morning to heavy rain but minimal wind.  I hemmed and hawed after breakfast and couldn’t decide if we should leave or stay.  I finally sucked it up and decided to shove off.  Shortly after leaving, the rain tapered off and the wind picked up and the temperature dropped.  I kept adding layers to cut down on my shivering.  Dave and Marty took turns keeping me company on the bridge.  Marty got a promotion to navigator and followed the chart perfectly getting us through the canal from Woudsend to Heegermeer (Heeger Lake) and onto the canal to Warkum, our destination for the evening.  As we approached Warkum, the sun came out and the day improved dramatically.













Not far from Warkum, we ran into a fleet of small sailboats(about a dozen) that had been racing in the Heegermeer.  They were making their way up the canal under sail into the wind, so they were tacking back and forth creating an obstacle course  that raised my blood pressure.  We finally made it through the maze and came to our first drawbridge.  Unfortunately, we were there at 12:30, in the middle of the bridge man’s lunch, so we had to hang out for ½ hour until it opened.  This gave the siling fleet of teenagers a chance to catch up, and one of them cut in front of us as we approached the bridge.  They had considerable difficulty sailing through the bridge opening again delaying our approach.  Not that easy to keep the boat stationary in the wind.


We finally got through and found a marina along the canal with an open spot and began our docking maneuver.  Even with a strong wind, we nailed it first time perfectly.  The captain and crew’s confidence took an exponential uptick.

         






We rode our bikes into town, parked and began walking the main street.

                                                               The town is beautiful, with old attached houses lining the street, some from 1600’s.  Dave and I stopped in a butcher shop and were treated to dried sausage that is a local delicacy.  Though not a sausage eater, I felt obliged to try it, and found out it wasn’t bad at all. The butcher’s wife also gave us recommendation for dinner, De Gulden Liu (the Golden Lion).  

We continued to cruise the town, stopping for baked goodies and ice cream (good lunch) and checking out the Gulden Liu in the town square.  We made plans to return to the Gulden Liu for dinner later.  

Directly behind the town was beautiful farm country, and we decided to take a spin on the bikes.  Great decision! We found a beautiful windmill close to the bike path, and saw a fied of yellow flowers in the distance.  I walked across a field to get a closer look and found the farmer there inspecting his flowers which turned out to be tulips.  Finally,

we get to see tulips.  They say timing is everything.  The farmer informed us that had we come 2 hours earlier, the adjacent field was filled with pink tulips, and the prior day, the field on the other side had tulips as well. He was getting ready to decapitate the yellow tulips.  At least we got to see these.

Dinner at the Gulden Liu was excellent, all of had fish of one sort or another (even Marty!).  Our waitress, like many people in the Netherlands hinterlands, spoke almost no English, but we all did the best we could and dinner was flawless (except for a 0.50 euro x 2 for ketchup).  I guess I probably should have learned some Dutch before I came, though many here don’t even speak Dutch but a variant called Friesian.

            Tomorrow on to Bolswarth. 

Jeri warming up with hot chocolate "a little something extra"