In and around Zwolle
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After Kettelhaven we made our way to Kraggenburg, a sidearm of the Zwollevaart and interestingly the whole area is woodland unlike almost everywhere else we have visited so far in the Netherlands, which meant an added bonus of great walks for the dogs in the woods, along with it being incredibly quiet. We managed to find one restaurant nearby where we stopped for drinks, though nothing else seemed to be open. (The whole area here is 5m lower than the surrounding waterways and it still confuses me how they keep the water flowing).
Next day we moved onto Hasselt – lifting back up 5m to rejoin the higher waterways – and it was a fairly quiet journey, although there were a few leisure craft around as it was a Sunday. Typically for a Sunday, everything is shut, so sightseeing was limited to walking around the town which was very quiet but still interesting.
We only stayed in Hasselt for the one night then set off for Zwolle where Lucy was due to join us. Zwolle is on a main line from Schipol airport so although her train journey took over an hour, she did not have to make any changes and arrived in the late evening which gave her/us a chance to see some of the illuminations that we often miss out on.
Zwolle was an interesting place – we were moored in front of a section of the historic city wall, and quite close to the town centre. There were some prettier bits further on but not any parts of the waterway we could get in to.
After a good night’s sleep, we took Lucy for a stroll round the town to see a few of its attractions, one of which was a book shop that was especially interesting, supposedly the prettiest bookstore in the Netherlands. It was inside an old church giving it a very unique feel (and had a very nice cafe to boot).
Another interesting tourist ‘route’ was a street art trail, and if you followed the painted footsteps you came across several interesting pavement drawings throughout the town which you could become a part of.
Leaving Zwolle we took a nearby waterway (called the Overijsselsche Vecht) that was not documented on the DBA waterways guide, which appeared to have two towns where you could moor up, Dalfsen and Ommen (Ommen being the end of the line for us).
The waterway was pleasant to cruise along and the surrounding countryside had a very English feel to it. Unusually, we encountered a manned lock on our way – almost like being on the Thames again! Our first overnight stop along this route was in Dalfsen, a very nice stretch of pleasant, tidy quay close to the centre and with a very welcoming harbour master.
Although we considered stopping for two nights, we decided instead to carry on along the Overijsselsche Vecht towards Ommen (oddly for the Netherlands so far, encountering yet another manned lock).
We reached Ommen after a few hours of cruising, mooring in a small haven just before the bridge, which we later found out was as far as we could have gone since there were size restrictions beyond the bridge that precluded us from going any further.
So after Ommen we had to turn back to Dalfsen and Lucy caught the train from there back to the airport. Nicki and I stayed on for a couple more days, as we had arranged for Tim and Glynis to join us here for a week’s cruising .
On one of our ‘free’ days we decided to take a walk over to a local castle, which we were told we would be able to look around. It was a reasonable walk and quite enjoyable, but we should have taken more notice of the phrase ‘look around’ – that was all we could do, stand outside the railings and look in, not actually go in!!
