July 2022 – Part 1
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Arriving in Groningen to await Amy’s arrival, we stopped at a mooring immediately outside the train station that she was due to come into, feeling very pleased with ourselves to have found such a convenient (free) spot. Unfortunately within minutes a port official called round to say that we could not stay there and that we needed to move into the town. A little disappointed, we cruised along a little further and found another good mooring at the Emmerbrug – a slightly further walk for our returning daughter, but not too bad nonetheless. Sadly her plane was delayed and there were also delays at the arrivals in Schipol, so she did not get to Groningen until about 10pm (instead of the scheduled 5pm) which meant that we did not have a chance to show her around the town.
Because of time constraints, we couldn’t stay any longer than overnight in Groningen, and next morning we set off for Veendam where we spent the night after showing Amy round the small town centre and the second hand shops, and from there we moved on to Stadskanaal passing through 40 bridges and 2 locks with bridges.
At Stadskanaal the weather began to improve, which made our next day’s journey to Ter Apel a little easier. This time we passed through a mere sixteen bridges and four locks with bridges, happily finding a nice little mooring on a bend, and just across the road from a lovely peaceful section of woodland close to Ter Apel abbey.
Today – 9th July – we eventually passed into Germany, and despite our concerns above passport control etc. we literally sailed across any border that may have been in place, stopping in Mappen at a nice bit of staging near the town centre.
Lucy’s birthday (10th July) was (for us) an early 8.30 start in cool weather. We knew this would be a lonbg old day of continuous travel which involved 35 bridges and six locks, and the weather was pretty wet a lot of the time. But we managed to stop at Schleuse Attenrheine and had a reasonably peaceful night.
We woke to better weather the next day, and travelled for the rest of the morning along the commercial Mittellandkanaal – interesting at first but day after day of the same thing soon got very boring. There did not seem to be many towns to stop in – well, only one we came across where you could get a coffee – and virtually all sport moorings (which were the only ones we were permitted to use) were at the very end of long commercial moorings, and there were a lot of big old commercial ships around.
Mooring was free but with no facilities we soon realised that access to water could be a problem as none of the small yachthavens we encountered would let us in to get water. Electric was fine with the new batteries and alternator but we soon realised that data reception was extremely limited on our contracts and in fact a lot of the time due to the remote locations, there was not even any phone coverage!
By the middle of July we reached Hannover, and could breathe a sigh of relief that we were in time to meet up with Amy’s friend, Paul, who was due to arrive on 15th and stay with us for a few days.
