31 May 2014 Tholen, Netherlands

Sirius is sitting in her last port in the Netherlands before the crossing tomorrow into Belgium. We have 43Km of industrial strength canal to traverse to reach Antwerp, our entry point before tomorrow evening. That seems plenty of time but there's no accounting for the whims of the lock-keeper at Kreekraksliuzen who will favour commercial traffic and leave us pleasure craft until the numbers build up and it's worthwhile opening the side lock.

One of the pleasures of this life is the daily bike ride. Some involve taking the bicycle ferry and this time we cycled to the attractive town of Breda.

We left Sirius in the small town of Oudenbosch for a week's trip to Sidney BC in Canada to visit old friends. It has always been a great place that for me has wonderful memories. If it were possible I'd love to cruise the Alaska/Canada Inside Passage again, this time over several seasons, like we are doing here in Europe.

Now this is a narrow canal! It runs 2Km to Dinteloord

So far travelling the waterways in Holland has been largely on smaller canals through the domestic scenery afforded by the towns and villages that we pass. Some have been through rural landscape and some known by the Dutch as "Nature" areas. But in this country everything is a construct, all built to reclaim land or to manage water and of course it is very flat,  hills are a rarity. So our nature tieups and walks are on very much man-made territory - all very ordered, clean and efficient.

Sitting enjoying peace and quiet in Biesbosch Nature park

We like these free tieups, there was a family of Coots feeding in the reeds  nearby.

We did visit some larger cities to be amazed by man's creativity. In Oudenbosch we were awed by a replica of the Basilica in Rome.

In Den Haag we took a trip the the Escher museum to bend our minds around illusory shapes. I'd wanted to see the real thing after seeing a replica museum in Huis Ten Bosch in Japan.