Posted on by LadyMtravels

North Holland and onward to Friesland

North Holland – Amsterdam to Medemblik

With our visitor safely aboard, we made a leisurely start on Sunday 18 June, heading a few kilometres westward along the Noordzeekanaal before turning north into the Zaan River towards Zaandam and into the province of North Holland.

The provincial boundary of Noord-Holland is actually a little south of Haarlem, but the Noordzeekanaal is a more convenient and easily-identified point of reference.

This route plan covers the voyage from Amsterdam (bottom left) north and west to Medemblik via Alkmaar and Schagen, and then onward to Sneek after crossing the Ijsselmeer to Stavoren

First stop was the Yacht Harbour A.r.z.v. at Akersloot, on what turned out to be a rather windy Sunday afternoon. We also discovered that it was Father’s Day here in the Netherlands, so every restaurant in the country was busy! It took some serious negotiation to find a table for us in the marina’s Restaurant De Roei that evening, but it was well-worth the grovelling and turned out to be a wonderful dinner.

Three hungry ‘boaties’ quenching their thirst at Restaurant De Roei

Alkmaar was only just over an hour’s motoring the following morning, and we were glad to take shelter from the gusting wind. Alkmaar is home to an amazing variety of ancient buildings, of which De Waag (The Weighing House) is probably the most famous.

Lady M comfortably moored up in Alkmaar’s Mient harbour (Photo courtesy of Magued)

We visited the VVV (Tourist Information Office) and purchased a neat little self-guided walking tour book covering the city’s most prominent historical buildings, to help us explore. Records from 1514 show that the city had a population of 3,500, and was surrounded by walls, and had a moat with a drawbridge which was pulled up at night.

Alkmaar’s “stripey” Stadhuis, of which the nearer (eastern) portion and the octagonal tower were built in 1520, and the western portion (beyond the staircase) was added in 1694. The carillon still chimes the time
The very ornate and attractive brickwork and stone facade of a home built as accommodation for 6 to 8 old men in 1656, and funded from the will of it’s benefactor Johan van Nordingen. It is locally known as the “Huis van Achten” (the House of Eight)
The very elegant “Court of Sonoy” with its octagonal tower. The Court was, since around 1400, the Convent of Saint Maria Magdalena, but was acquired by the City in 1572 as a result of the Reformation. It was then sold to Diederick van Sonoy, a local provincial governor, and later in 1591 he sold it to lawyer William van Bardes
Looking across the bascule bridge guarding an entrance to the old city, behind which is the so-called “House with the Bullet” dating from the mid 1500’s. History has it that during the siege of Alkmaar in 1573 by Spanish forces, a bullet (actually a cannon ball) penetrated this house and shattered a chair upon which a girl was sitting whilst operating a spinning wheel. None of the seven people in the house were injured, and you can see the cannon ball mounted on the outside wall (centre left) just above the date of 1573
One of the smartest stepped gabled buildings in Alkmaar, “The House with the Spades” (note the 3 spades emblem above the door) which was built in 1609 and housed the city’s pastry cooks. Flour and grain was hoisted into the warehouse above, and pastries and bread were sold from displays on the horizontal shutters at street level
Alkmaar’s world-famous De Waag (Weighing House) which dates to approximately 1390 and was originally a guest house for poor travelers and the sick. It was rebuilt in 1582 after the city of Alkmaar re-gained the right to weigh its own produce after defeating the Spanish
This house dates from 1540 and is one of Alkmaar’s oldest houses, a simple middle-class dwelling with horizontal shutters under the porch from which merchandise could be sold from the living room by the occupants
This once city mansion was built by the wealthy Mr Leeuwenberg (Leeuw is Dutch for a lion) in 1707. He intended to represent his name by having two sandstone lions and the Alkmaar city coat of arms on the gable. As a result of a series of unpleasant dealings with the city council and delays to his building permit, he reversed the lions so that their derriere’s face the coat of arms to reflect his irritation – Brilliant !

Our next destination en-route to Medemblik on Wednesday 21 June was Schagen, a convenient overnight stop with a small harbour and walking distance to the town centre. It was a longish day of more than 5 hours as a result of a couple of “lazy bridge openings”, and the wind didn’t help. After mooring up, we wandered into the town centre, only to discover that it was dominated by a visiting children’s fair and showground, accompanied by all the associated ‘doof-doof’ and bass music. We spent a quiet but very pleasant evening on Lady M with the faint thump of music in the distance, instead of having our traditional sundowner in one of the town’s local pubs.

Captain Magued showing how it’s done

It was an even longer day of 7.5 hours on Thursday 22 June, as we continued our way north on the Noordhollandsch Kanaal towards Den Helder, then east on the Balgzandkanaal and south on the Slootvaart (including a total of five locks) to get to Medemblik’s comfortable Westerhaven just after 5pm. The Slootvaart had long sections of shallow water where the weed level was right under our keel, which made that part of the journey quite uncomfortable and hard work steering, but no damage done.

Sunset view looking east down the length of Medemblik’s Westerhaven, a very spacious and comfortable harbour with good facilities and just a short stroll to the town’s main street

Friday 24 June was spent exploring the town’s main street, it’s railway station and the other two main harbours, which collectively have many hundreds of yachts and motor yachts to admire. There is also the massive Regatta Centre Medemblik which is built out into the Ijsselmeer and protected by a 500m long sea wall, and which provides moorings for more than 500 sea-going yachts. Very impressive – have a look on Google Maps!

Sadly, all good things must come to an end. Magued’s visit was celebrated in style with one of Elaine’s hearty Champagne breakfasts

On Saturday 24 June we said farewell to Magued, and he and Tim headed into Hoorn by bus before hopping on the train – Magued heading for Rotterdam, and Tim to Schiphol Airport to meet our new guests who were arriving early that afternoon from South Africa.

Medemblik to Stavoren and Friesland

With our guests Mervyn & Maryna safely on board later that afternoon, we had a late night chatting and swapping news. Tim and Mervyn met at Natal University in 1978, graduating as civil engineers in 1981, and so have been friends for 46 years, managing to keep in touch despite distances, remote projects and living in various countries, not to mention getting married and bringing up families along the way. The last time our families had seen each other was on a shared holiday near Cape Town in December 1998 – almost 25 years ago!

Having a healthy respect for the weather, we picked Sunday 25 June to make our 23km crossing of the Ijsselmeer from Medemblik to Stavoren, because it offered a wind forecast of only 8 to 12 km/hour – ideal conditions. The crossing was a breeze (please excuse the pun) and took about 2 hours, and so we were through the lock at Stavoren and happily moored up in the shade before noon.

Stavoren has a special place in our hearts because it is where we first took possession of Lady M in late April 2017, and from where our actual travels on Lady M began in early May 2017. It was covered in our first blog post published on 18 May 2017.

To date we have published a total of 57 posts covering six seasons (we missed 2020 due to Covid-19), and we hope to be able to continue for a few more seasons to come.

Stavoren still has an active ocean fishing fleet – here is some of the fleet laying in the fishing boat harbour on Sunday afternoon. They were all gone very early on Monday morning

Our plan was to take Mervyn & Maryna to Sneek by Thursday 29 June (for their onward train trip to Ghent on Friday 30 June) via a few small Friesland towns. Workum was our next stop on a windy Monday 26 June, and although it was inexplicably quite busy, we managed to find a quiet mooring (albeit without power) near the town centre.

Workum’s De Waag building from 1650, with the two lions on the town’s coat of arms looking strangely oriental

There are unfortunately not many photographs to share, because we spent a lot of time chatting and exploring with our visitors, however we had lots of fun and there were a few beers (and wines) consumed along the way.

Friesland’s Elfstedentocht Cities

Here is probably a good place to also mention that we were again in Friesland, home to the historic ‘Elfstedentocht‘ (Eleven cities tour) which is an ice skating competition on a 199km course taking in 11 main cities in Friesland, with 300 speed skaters and about 15,000 leisure contestants. The cities are Leeuwarden, Sneek, IJlst, Sloten, Stavoren, Hindeloopen, Workum, Bolsward, Harlingen, Franeker, and Dokkum.

The Elfstedentocht route (Courtesy of: Condor3d. Kaart op basis van OpenStreetMap. – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=112620953)

The tour was first held in 1909 when there were 22 competitors and the winning time was 13hrs 50min. It was last held in 1997, when the winning time was 6hr 49min at an average speed of more that 29km/hr ! Safety requires that the ice along the course must be at least 15cm thick for the event to be permitted, so its anybody’s guess when the next one might be held !

Onward to Sneek

Our visit to Workum was followed by a night at Bolsward and then Heeg, before arriving in Sneek (via IJlst) on Thursday 29 June, with coffees and custard fruit tarts at the local “Brownies & downieS” to celebrate Tim’s birthday!

Mervyn and Tim about to attack their cold beers at a brasserie alongside the canal in Heeg

For the first time in three visits to Sneek, we were fortunate enough to find a mooring just on the edge of De Kolk basin, and facing the 17th century Waterpoort – a great spot, and easy walking into the lively town centre.

The view from Lady M across the always-busy De Kolk basin to the beautiful Waterpoort, one of Sneek’s 17th century city gates
Here is the happy crew with the Waterpoort behind . . . . . . and proof that even people of our age can take selfie’s (at least, after a few tries . . . . !)

It was all too soon before our visitors were leaving us on Friday 30 June and on their way south from Sneek station to continue their holiday with a visit to Ghent. It is always strangely quiet aboard Lady M after our visitors depart, and it takes a day or so to get used to being on our own again.

We busied ourselves with some housekeeping, putting new saddles on our bikes (the original ‘Specialised’ ones were ‘entry-level’ and very uncomfortable), and checking out the weather over the coming days. The forecast was for 2-3 days of wet and very windy conditions, so on Saturday 1 July we headed for Joure’s sheltered harbour to ‘bunker-down’ for a few days whilst the weather blew over.

You will be able to read more about our visit to Joure (and the brass band competition that greeted us), and the final few weeks of our season in Friesland, in the next post which will follow in a couple of weeks.

Until then, our best wishes to you all.

4 Replies to “North Holland and onward to Friesland”

  1. Hi Elaine and Tim
    Thank you for your wonderful blogs, you seem to be really happy and enjoying your travels, look forward to the next email. fondly Trish & Trevor

    Like

    Reply

    1. Hi Trish & Trevor, Great to hear from you, and we are very pleased to hear that you are enjoying the journey with us. Our last week, and we will be back home on 22 July, so we will get in touch in August to make a plan to catch-up. Best regards, Tim & Elaine

      Like

      Reply

      1. Hi Elaine & Tim
        Just catching up on my emails, we are selling Aston Place and moving into retirement village “The Queenslea” in Claremont, so very busy, but truly looking forward to catching up, I see by todays date, you must be home, so Welcome Home.
        Fondly Trish

        Like

      2. Dear Trish & Trevor, Many thanks for your kind wishes, and we wish you all the best in your new abode, and we hope the transition goes as smoothly as possible. We got home on Saturday evening, and are slowly wading through all of the mail and admin things. I still have another blog to write in the next week or so ! We will give you a call in a week or two to see how you are going, and maybe try and set up a date for a breakfast or lunch somewhere local. Best regards, Tim & Elaine

        Like

Leave a comment