March 2025
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Waterways travelled this month: Rietdiep (classed as a canal in parts, river in others); Noord-Willemskanaal; Drentsche Hoofdvaart; Meppelerdiep)
Part 1 – After our brief outing on Shensi, we arrived back at our berth in the early afternoon of 26th February, intending to stay for a few more weeks and get everything literally shipshape and ready for this year’s cruising. Over and above those general preparations, I also began an oft-discussed project of re-designing of the wheelhouse, so I took advantage of the available time to crack on with this, especially as Nicki returned to the UK for a week. And despite all the extra activities of daily dog walking, doling out Casper’s many and various daily medications – 12 sets per day – and vet visits, I managed to get around 90% complete before she got back on 18th March – happily she was very, very pleased with the way the wheelhouse was shaping up! A few more days of tidying up and mean we were ready to leave Reitdiephaven on 21st.
Part 2 – Departure day finally arrived with the sun shining and no wind, and we were off – a later start than we’d anticipated (11.00am), but that was due to a quick dog walk, various ‘admin’ tasks with Ella (the havenmeister) and saying goodbye to a couple of other boat owners in the marina.
After an hour of cruising we hit our first delay at Nordwillamsvaart Spoorbrug, and had to wait half an hour for this rail bridge to be raised, followed only another half hour further along by another delay at the next bridge (Parkbrug) for what we think was the bridgekeeper’s lunch break.
Anyway, at 1.25pm we heard the alarm sounding for the bridge opening, and it was ropes off and away again. The day had been relatively uneventful, with no other boats passing other than canoeists enjoying the lovely weather, and we continued on for another hour until we spied a nice-looking mooring area and decided to stop for the night.
Despite being opposite a busy motorway, this morning turned out to be very pleasant, with a lovely grassy stretch running it’s length, good bollards to tie up to, and a nearby lake where we could walk the dogs. The lake turned out to be the Paterswolde Meer, which is apparently the most visited lake in the entire province of Drenthe and some 3+ metres below the level of the main canal. (It was created between the 15th and 16th centuries due to extensive peat farming in the area which led to major subsidence, but then the area wasn’t discovered again until the early 20th century when it became popular with holidaymakers.)
At the point of stopping, we weren’t sure whether to spend one or two nights there and decided to see what the next day brought, but as it turned out the next bridge along (Meerwegbrug) would be unavailable to us until after the weekend as we needed to give 24 hours notice for it’s operation, but it being late on a Friday evening when we realised this, we couldn’t give said notice until Monday!!! That took away any decision as to how long we’d stay, and as this was a nice place to be, we were more than happy to remain the few extra days.
The weather deteriorated a little over the weekend with some rainy spells, so we got some more work done in and around the boat and our time was not wasted. One of my jobs included finding the source of a leak within the engine room, which I was pretty certain I had tracked down to water being forced up and under the wheelhouse door seal, and then leaking into the engine room and various other gaps. After some heavy duty sealing around the frame, we just had to wait for the next heavy rain storm to see how true this proved to be.
Back to our travels – having finally got hold of the bridgekeeper, we arranged to leave on the Monday (24th) after all, but just fifteen minutes after departure we reached the Meerwegbrug, only to find that there was a problem with remote operation and they needed us to wait until another boat arrived to make it worth their while driving to the bridge to operate it manually. After an hour the operator appeared and opened up the bridge as soon as the cruiser had arrived. Here, we also found out that we could not go via our planned route into Assen due to a sluis problem, and so we had to revise our scheduled route slightly. Not a problem – a little re-jigging on the WinGPS to plot a new course and we were able to carry on.
At the next bridge (Oosterbroeksebrug) we encountered, we had to wait for around 45 minutes (their lunch break, of course) until the bridge was opened at 1pm, and some two hours later we arrived on the outskirts of Assen, turning into Marsdijk Marina on the Waterwinde to stop for the day/night against a long stretch of grassed bank with bollards, opposite the marina entrance.
This was a pleasant stop with a decent dog walk in a wooded area and parkland on the other side of the river, and although there was a €7.50 p/n charge no-one called to collect, which is always a plus for us. As soon as we’d sorted out the boat, I had to quickly cycle off to a local pharmacy to collect some meds, but after that we were able to relax for the evening.
Setting off the next day (25th), we arrived at the first sluis of the day (Sluis Peelo), a mere 15 minutes away – the previous day we had arranged with a bridgekeeper to travel through this sluis which despite being under repair, he told us that they would operate it manually. Sadly, when we arrived and spoke again with him, he said that we would now need to wait a further couple of days until a second boat arrived. It wasn’t clear whether this was just my (mis)understanding of the lock manager’s poor english or whether they were not in a position to operate the lock properly, but ultimately it meant that we had to head back to the Marsdijk haven for s fee more nights.
By this point, Nicki had been unwell for a few days so it was a chance for her to take it easy and recover. I rode into the shops to buy fresh food supplies, got yet more work done in the boat and made several obligatory dog walks. Unfortunately, at the end of our third night a havenmeister called to collect mooring fees (disappointing, but at least it wasn’t an exorbitant fee – 15€ – and we think he actually only charged us for two nights), a nice guy who actually remembered Shensi from a previous visit a couple of years ago.
Up, ready and hopeful for departure on the Thursday (27th), we called the bridge/lock keeper for a time to arrive at the entrance, only to be given a vague 1pm, 2pm, maybe 10am! (again due to poor English) and he’d call us as appropriate. Not very useful really but we decided to move off to a staging closer to the sluis so that we could be there the instant he called.
Eventually we were called into the sluis, only then to be told there would be a 20 minute wait for another boat to lock in with us. Some 40 minutes later it arrived, and the filling of this 5 metre deep lock began. As we rise in the lock we noted an arty sculpture overlooking the sluis, which turned out to be a set of 5 large musical horns atop an 8 meter tower designed as an aluminium sound instrument for the lock keeper. Amazing what you can do with a good imagination!
The 5-tone horn reacts to the water level in the lock and these horns form a C chord. When the water in the lock drops, a lower tone sounds with every meter. When the water rises, the pitches climb – we actually weren’t aware of these sounds, but there was some maintenance/repair work going on, so possibly it wasn’t working at that visit.
Pressing on, we left Assen behind us as we passed through some lovely little towns, and along the route we came across these three inflatable characters outside of a waterside home – with a sign “grys haar, rimpel daar, de drieling, 50 jaar” (roughly translates to “gray hair, wrinkles, the triplets are 50”). Let’s hope they didn’t want to keep that a secret!
We also noticed a few bankside metal sculptures, which Mr Google informed us were created as a tribute to the history of the canal.
Eventually though, the day ran out when the bridgekeeper’s workday ended, and we had to stop just ahead of the Pieter Hoogersmildebrug. With the bridgekeeper’s promise of a 9am start the next day, we made a pleasant walk with the dogs in nearby fields, followed by dinner all round, after which we were all ready to relax for the evening.
Rising early (7.30am … extremely early for us) the day started with a good walk for the dogs and a refreshing coffee before we were all ready for our scheduled departure. Today (28th) was going to be a short trip along the canal to Dieverbrug where we intended to fill up with fuel and water from a bankside petrol station we’d used last time we passed through. Unfortunately as we arrived the owner came out to say the station was closed (for what looked to us like major renovation works), and we were waved away. A nuisance, but there will be other places to fill, and we’re not desperate yet. Anyway, having already planned to stay at Dieverbrug until Monday, we drifted back onto a stretch of free mooring and roped up, and the bridgekeeper drove off to his next job, after agreeing to a 9am start again on Monday (31st), the last day of March 2025.
With the day ahead of us, we took a walk into the town of Diever to look around, briefly stopping at a Kringloopwinkel en route which we obviously had to explore. A couple of purchases later we returned to the boat to drop them back and set off again.
Whilst the town was not very big, it was fairly attractive, mostly surrounded by farmland and forest, with a section of parkland at the opposite edge.
We stopped at a nice-looking cafe/bistro to rest our (by then) weary legs, before making the return walk home with a quick stop at a local supermarket for basics.
After another good night’s rest we set to on a few of our chores – my first job of the day was to try and clean the hull, which involved using a rope to pull the rear of Shensi into the canal so that I had easy access to the bow from the bank, whilst Nicki took the dogs to and from the last sluis to give them a really good walk.
Once we had both finished we took a stroll over the road to a really charming little shop (‘Diverse Pluimage’ which sold lots of pretty, strange and unusual garden and indoor furnishings, to name but a few things. Nicki couldn’t resist snapping a few shots just to have a reminder of it’s lovely ornaments!
During our stay at this mooring, we tried to accomplish as much as we could, which aside from the hull cleaning included window cleaning, sanding back and appling a first coat of varnish to the stern rails and doing a little dog grooming, but that was just the tip of a long list of jobs for the season!
On the final day of March we moved on towards Meppel with the support of a bridge/lock keeper until we reached Paradijssluis , after which it was VHF remote control into the town. We chose to stay in the Buitenhaven (outer harbour) for our first night in Meppel, but after a walk round the centre we decided to move into the town’s public moorings (Meppelersluis geheven) via it’s charming little sluis the following morning.
