Day 6 - Gouda to Uithoorn

Today was a big traveling day, passing mostly by farms and businesses with some small villages here and there. 

Typical scenery

Getting ready to pass under a bridge with another one just ahead.

You can see the highway passing under the canal we're on.

At one point, our canal passed OVER a highway!  We've been under many bridges in this trip, but this was the first time we went over a bridge in a boat! 

For a good part of the trip we were on a canal that barges also use.  This can be scary!  At one point, we were waiting for a bridge to open.  This means circling around unless there’s a place to moor up against.  It was windy today as it has been all week.  When the wind catches the boat it pushes it wherever it wants and you have little control.  Although you are supposed to wait on the right (starboard) side, the way the river curved, we couldn't see what was coming from that side.  So, we were near the left (port) side of the canal and a large boat was coming through pretty fast in the opposite direction from which we were traveling.  We needed to wait for that boat to pass through the bridge before we could go through.  At the last minute, David saw that we weren’t securely up against anything and the wind was pushing us back to the middle of the canal in the path of that boat.  He made the decision to go with the wind and shoot across the canal in front of that boat before it got to us.  The reason is because he has more control over our boat if we're moving than if we're just idling and waiting as we had been.

Tied up on the side waiting for a bridge to open.

Of course, we made it safely across in plenty of time but my heart was in my mouth the whole time.  Afterwards we discussed how we could be safer if that situation came up again.  And it did, less than 30 minutes later.  We were waiting for a bridge to open.  When it did, we could see there was a large boat coming through.  This time we were tied up against a side wall.  As soon as the boat passed under the bridge, we untied and started to head towards the bridge.  Just then, it closed again.  David was pretty angry!  We had to wait a while for it to open again.  We also met a couple from Germany while we were waiting for a bridge to open.  They had also rented from Locaboat.  We were chatting a bit and he had done boat rental trips about 17 times already!  Their boat was smaller and much faster, so they left us in the dust.  Later on, they pulled off and moored while we went on ahead. 

Early in the afternoon, we found a quiet place to pull our boat over and tied it to two trees.  We had some leftovers from dinner the previous night and some bread and cheese we’d bought, so we had a lovely lunch.  Right next to where we were eating, someone had a flower stand on the side of their house.  The flowers were marked with prices and a dish was there for the money – the honor system again.  So, we decided to buy a small flowering plant for the boat, even though we’d be leaving it behind in a few days. 

We continued on until we reached Uithoorn, our stopping place for the night.  Right next to the middle of the town are a bunch of docks available for us.  There was no electric or water here but it seemed safe and we could walk right into the town in a minute.  A man stopped by to collect the fee for staying here – 4.50 euros, and we were set for the night!

This is a very small town that is not even mentioned in the travel guides.  We walked all around the town in about an hour and found the only hotel in Uithoorn and it had a nice restaurant.  Inside, I found that they had free wifi!!!  YAY!!!  I grabbed my computer and went back there spending about an hour catching up on my emails and facebook while I nursed a cup of cappuccino and ate a small stroopwaffel.  We went back that evening to have a very nice dinner there.

Taken at dinner by our waitress