Walking on the sea bed, flying cows and drowned rats.

Hello and welcome to the latest blog from The Olivia Rose Diaries on August 12^th 2023.

After our exciting crossing of the IJsselmeer last week we arrived in Flevoland, the 12^th province of The Netherlands and also the newest, officially recognised in 1986.

Imagine that you could walk on the sea bed, that the water had been drained away, dykes and locks had been constructed to permanently keep the sea at bay and you were left with an area of land similar to the size of Luxembourg at approx 2,412 square km. This is Flevoland, the largest artificial island by land reclamation in the world, and one which also happens to be around 6 metres beneath sea level.

Six metres beneath sea level. This is one of those phrases that you can so easily read and not really take in, but it is astonishing. What does it actually look like? To enter Flevoland we had to drop down through two locks. The picture below is the larger lock, which accounts for most of the change in level, and you can see the boat is now down at the bottom of it.

There were times when being so far below the surrounding water level made me feel uneasy, but then I reminded myself that very few countries have the infrastructure, or the incentive, to manage water as efficiently and safely as the Netherlands. In some ways it didn’t look any different to the rest of the country, but there were subtle differences if you looked for them.

We walked and cycled along trails through pleasant woodland but noted how sandy the soils were, even more so than usual.

Exploring the town of Dronten at the northern end of the region we realised that it was missing something. There was no sense of history, of the past. Everything was new, much of it built in the 1960’s and 70’s. There was no historical centre, no medieval church, no old buildings or tales of heroes and villains over the ages. It did have a market square, but on days when the market was not there it was just an open expanse of concrete surrounded by a big shopping centre. The town felt as if it had no heart, no soul, very different to the rest of the country which, while having a very modern bias, still retains many fine old monuments. It was only in its absence that I fully appreciated the subtle, taken-for-granted contribution that a sense of history brings to our towns and cities, and I wondered if the people who lived here felt a sense of loss or had simply accepted their new town for what it was.

Leaving Flevoland at Kettlehaven we cruised a short stretch up the River Ijssel to Kampen, home to the flying cow. There is an old story that claims good grazing can be found at the top of the ‘New Tower’. This was completed in1664 and so the word ‘new’ in this context is very different to that of Dronten. Each summer a plastic cow is hoisted on high, giving a new twist to the old saying that the grass is always greener.

From Kampen we cut through to the Randmeren Lakes, marking the eastern border of Flevoland with the mainland. The 14^th century town of Elburg on the mainland won the award for our favourite town so far. It was tiny, unspoilt, offered excellent pistachio-flavoured ice-cream and, something new to us, kibbeling. ‘Kibbeling’ is a Dutch snack consisting of battered chunks of white fish, often cod, served with a mayonnaise-based garlic sauce. You might mistakenly consider it as similar to cod and chips in the UK, but this is far lighter and tastier, not at all greasy and the perfect snack to enjoy by the quayside before we began the long cycle ride back to the boat.

The weather over the last few weeks has been a trial, not just for us but for the whole of northern Europe. The picture below sums up the joys of cruising in wet weather.

We’ve spent our time dodging showers, scuttling out on the bikes to do the shopping in a supposedly dry patch only to get drenched to the skin five minutes before we got back. Or we would pick a morning forecast as being dry to move on the next twenty kilometres or so only to find ourselves hit by a torrential downpour half an hour after leaving. The wind has been a menace and there have been some nights where it has been difficult to sleep through the gusts rocking the boat around and some mornings where we have struggled to get off our moorings as the wind has pinned us to the bank. Large expanses of water, be it lakes or inland seas, or even wide rivers, have their own weather patterns and tend to attract, or cause, windy weather. It got to the point where I felt both physically and mentally battered by it but on the day we finally left the long string of lakes behind us and cruised in to Weesp the sun came out, the wind died down, the sky turned blue and I remembered why I loved this life.

We will be re-tracing our steps for the next few weeks, cruising along the beautiful River Vecht once again towards our winter moorings. As August draws to a close our season also comes to an end. It’s time to savour these last few weeks.

Hope your weather is behaving better than ours!

MJ