When Technology Fails

The Dutch locks on the Maas River and on the canals we've traveled the past few days have been technological marvels. Most of the locks (and lift bridges) are no longer operated with on-site lock and bridge tenders, but are controlled remotely from centralized locations and are thus highly dependent upon a myriad of cameras and other sensory devices at each lock and lift bridge. We have been pleased with how well and efficiently the locks and bridges have worked for us during our 2-week cruise. Until yesterday.

We left the city of Den Bosch on Saturday morning via the Zuid-Willemsvaart and spent the night at a mooring in the village of Beek en Donk. Our plan on Sunday was to cruise for four hours and stop for the day. One-and-a-half hours into the cruise, at 10:30 a.m., we were halted at Helmond Lock.

The dreaded vertical "double red" signifies that a lock is not functioning

We were not the only boat to be stopped and were able to get the "scoop" on what the problem was from a Dutch gentleman on the boat in front of us. The Helmond Lock is operated from a center in the city of Tilburg, about 35 miles from Helmond. Apparently, the cameras at the lock had gone black, and without cameras it was not possible to get boats safely through the lock. The Dutch water services did not have sufficient staff to send a lock tender to Helmond for on-site operation. The fact that it was Sunday probably complicated matters as well. Tilburg did not have an appropriate technician on-site at the control center and had to send for one from the city of Utrecht (about 50 miles from Tilburg). So, we tried to relax, had a leisurely lunch, and continued to wait some more. The lock was still inoperative at 3:00 p.m., at which time we decided that, even if the lock were to be fixed, it was too late in the day for us to continue. Some locks stop operating at 5 p.m. on Sundays and mooring spots are somewhat scarce in that section of the waterway. We decided to spend the night moored to the lock quay and take an hour or two to "escape" the boat and get an impression of the city of Helmond.

Helmond had a fair amount of industry, and the central part of town was mostly newer construction with no cohesive "feel" to it. It did have two really interesting features, however, a castle and "cube houses."

These "cube houses" were designed by architect Piet Blom in the early 1970's. They are supposed
to be evocative of trees. They initially formed an architectural whole with a theater that was
destroyed by fire in 2011. Subsequent, and more famous, versions of Blom cube houses are in Rotterdam. The angles of the walls and windows were somewhat disorienting to look at--and no doubt the houses require a good deal of creative thinking with respect to furniture and window coverings

Helmond Castle is the largest moated castle in the Netherlands. Construction of the castle 
started around 1325. It passed into city hands in the 1920's and was used for a time as a town
hall. The castle is currently the location of Museum Helmond and also serves as a wedding venue

When we got back to the boat after our brief excursion into Helmond we found that the lock was back in operation. It remained that way overnight and worked perfectly when we went through this morning.

Prior to the lock misadventure we'd had several interesting days. As mentioned in the previous posting, our last cruising day on the Maas River was Wednesday, June 22.

Playing "dodge the ferry." There aren't a lot of bridges over the Maas, so ferries were a 
common sight along our entire Maas route

The captain of this commercial barge greeted us via horn, no doubt because we, like he,
had a Polish boat registration

While it was mostly sedate cruising, we did have a brief bit of excitement just before we turned onto the Maxima Canal.

Two military helicopters decided to do a "gun run" at low altitude on the Maas, and passed
right by our boat

We spent Wednesday (June 22) through Saturday morning (June 25) in nearly-unpronounceable s'-Hertogenbosch, a lovely old city (dating to the 10th century) of about 150,000. The name is a contraction of archaic Dutch des Hertogen bosch, "the forest of the Duke." It is colloquially known as Den Bosch--much easier for us to say. The Duke to which the name refers was the town's founder, Henry I of Brabant. 

Den Bosch was built in a swampy area between two rivers. Its first walled fortifications were replaced in the 14th century by a second set of walls, which both increased the size of the town and enclosed the branches of the rivers within the city. Most Dutch towns demolished their medieval walls to facilitate growth, and Den Bosch could have done the same after an act on fortifications was passed in the 1870's.  However, the walls were preserved then, and still exist today, because they also served as a defense against flooding.

Outside a portion of the Den Bosch 14th century fortifications

One of Den Bosch's "claims to fame" is that it was the hometown of Jheronimus Bosch, a painter of the late Middle Ages (1450-1516). He came from a family of painters, although he became the most famous of them. Not many of his works still exist, but those that do are full of references to morality, church, sexuality, and conscience. It is also said that the people of the time found a great deal of humor in his work. One cannot deny that he had an extremely "active" (and may I say, strange) imagination (Google "The Garden of Earthly Delights" for a glimpse of Bosch.) Interestingly, not a single one of his works is in the city of Den Bosch today. 

A former Catholic church now houses the Jheronimus
Bosch Art Center. Sculptures in the plaza out front
represent interpretations of images from Bosch's works

Mostly we just enjoyed walking around town to enjoy the sights. Unlike many of the towns and cities we've visited on our current cruise, Den Bosch did not suffer destruction in WWII, so many of its buildings of historical interest still exist. We also took a small boat canal cruise on the Binnendieze, the term for the branches of the rivers contained in the city walls that served as a city transport route starting in the 15th century. Of the original 12 kilometers of waterways about 3.5 km still exist.

Shopping street in central Den Bosch

Saint John's Cathedral is celebrating its 800th anniversary this year. Most
of the construction is not that old, but the church is considered to be
the height of Dutch Gothic

The stone façade of the late 13th century Saint Anthony's
Chapel, now incorporated into a modern office building 

The Moriaan is known as the oldest brick house in Den Bosch. 
The oldest preserved parts date to the 13th century, although 
the current appearance is mostly 14th century. The local tourist
office currently occupies the 1st floor 

Getting ready for "Opera on Parade" in the plaza outside Saint John's

The main aisle in the interior of Saint John's. The 
mural work on the ceilings dates to the late
15th or early 16th century

  

Looking forward to our canal cruise in "underground" Den Bosch

Going down to board the boat

A chapel (center) was built over the river. It was once part of a large
monastery dating from the 16th century. There were once so
many churches and monasteries that the town was called
"small Rome"

It's a whole different perspective from the watery basement 
of the city

Bats are provided with dwellings in the shape of a bat.

A modern passageway was cut through the
old 14th century wall to emerge outside the 
borders of the medieval town
 

Friday's weather was a little unsettled, so we located the local multiplex and enjoyed "Elvis."

We liked this theater! Cushy seating like we have in our local
theater in St. Petersburg

Saturday morning we left Den Bosch in what turned out to be a "convoy" of a half dozen pleasure boats, all of whom wanted to catch the 10 a.m. opening of a lift bridge near the junction of the Maxima and Zuid-Willemsvaart Canals. It's quite a contrast between river cruising and canal cruising--the locks on the canal are about half (or less) of the length of some of the Maas locks (which means the commercial boats are generally smaller on the canals); the canals have long, straight stretches with very little of the meandering one finds on the river; and lift bridges are now part of the cruising equation.

Canal cruising: straight lines and the occasional lift bridge

Our stop for the evening was a small quay near Lock 6 in the village of Beek en Donk that allowed for up to 3 days of free mooring. 

A little bit of exploration found us at Croy Castle, on the outskirts
of the village of Aarle-Rixtel. The oldest parts of the castle date
from the mid-15th century. Over the centuries several noble
families inhabited the castle. A restoration in 1990 turned the 
castle into an office building. It has a moat!

Saturday dinner was at a fantastic restaurant just down the canal
from the boat, "Eeterij Uniek." Since most of the restaurants don't
have English menus, part of the experience is the use of Google
Translate to help us with our food and drink selections

The restaurant was definitely "Uniek"

It's now Monday evening and we are nearly back to Maasbracht. Given that our cruise yesterday was so truncated, we put in a longer day and are moored for the evening just upstream of the Panheel lock (just a few km to the north of Maasbracht). We'll be in Maasbracht tomorrow.

Watch Out For . . Feral Chickens?

The sign below was adjacent to the biking path I took to get to the grocery store on Monday, June 20. (There was also a sign that advised those using the path to stay 25 meters away from the cows.)

"Watch out for . . . ."

This was not my first time seeing a "wildrooster" sign, but every time I see one I want to laugh. We saw several in 2008 when a bike trip through portions of the eastern Netherlands took us through a nature reserve area. At that time Google Translate did not exist, so Lon and I wondered if we were being warned about some form of aggressive bird. (After all, we'd had experience with wild turkeys in Minnesota that were very possessive of the bicycle trails in parts of the suburban Twin Cities.) Ah, the danger of the "sounds like" when trying to interpret a foreign language. When we asked Dutch friends Joost and Yolanda about the term, they were highly amused by our interpretation, to say the least. No, there were/are no crazy, rabid chickens inhabiting the Netherlands--only paths and roads with very mundane cattle grates.

We spent a lovely Monday in Nijmegen, a city of just under 200,000 people.  It is said to be the oldest city in the Netherlands, its recognition as a city going back to Roman times. Its position on the large Waal River makes it part of a busy freight transport route. 

The Nijmegen waterfront on the Waal is more utilitarian than
touristy. Most shopping and restaurants are in the center of town

Oldest city it may be, but not a lot of the old Nijmegen still exists. Due to its proximity to the German border, it was the first city in the Netherlands to be captured by the Germans in May 1940. However, it was the events of 1944 and 1945 that caused the most devastation. On February 22, 1944, the city center was heavily damaged when Nijmegen was bombed by American planes whose crews thought they were bombing the German city of Kleve. Several months later, in September 1944, the city was a center of fighting during Operation Market Garden (an Allied military operation intended to establish an invasion route into Germany.) 

Thankfully, the main market square, the Grote Markt, managed to survive the
WWII destruction. The beautiful building to the right is De Waag ("scale"), a Renaissance-era weighing house built in 1612

Sint Stevenskerk was built between the 13th and 15th centuries.
It was heavily damaged during WWII

The Latin School from 1545 stands beside Sint Stevenskerk, and
somehow managed to survive WWII intact

The old town hall (Stadhuis), standing just to the east of the Grote Markt. Mostly
destroyed in WWII, the front portion was left as a burnt-out shell and was
 heavily restored. The current town hall was built just behind this building

Fragments of Nijmegen history preserved in walls of the 
old Stadhuis

A modern shopping street

Market day in the Grote Markt

The Lange Hezelstraat, a more traditional shopping street

The Sint-Nicolaaskapel, is a chapel on the Valkhof hill (in Valkhof Park) in the center of Nijmegen. The current chapel dates from about 1000, and is said to use remains from a palace chapel that Charlemagne
had previously built on the site. Unfortunately for us, we were in Nijmegen on the one day of the
week that the chapel is closed to visitors

Also in Valkhof Park are the Barbarossa ruins, known as St. Maarten's
 Chapel. It is the only remaining remnant of the Valkhof Palace,
built in 1155 by Emperor Frederik Barbarossa. The building fragment
is thought to be the apse of the Imperial Hall, which also served 
as the court chapel

On our ride out of Nijmegen we stopped briefly at a Commonwealth War Cemetery.

The Jonkerbos War Cemetery contains the remains of over 1600
British and Commonwealth servicemen who lost their lives during
the WWII operations in 1944 and 1945

On Tuesday, June 21, we continued our journey down the Maas. It was a pleasant, uneventful cruise, and we stopped for the evening on a floating pontoon ("dock" in America-speak) just after we exited the lock at Lith. We "celebrated" the Summer Solstice by noting that the sun didn't set until about 10 p.m., twilight lingered until at least 11, and it started getting light again before 5 a.m. the next morning.

In Lith we had a front-row seat for the comings and goings from the lock. Most of the recreational 
boats we see are cruisers, or other small boats, and we are large compared to them. But next to
a container barge we are itty-bitty 

Yesterday we turned off the Maas onto the Maxima Canal on our way to 's-Hertogenbosch, familiarly known as Den Bosch. We're on a quay quite near to the city center and plan to be here for 3 nights.

Easy Does It

The past few days have confirmed to us that a leisurely approach to cruising is "just the ticket" for us. Last year, with its shortened season and ambitious itinerary, saw us boating most days in the 2 months that it took us to get from Auxonne, France to Maasbracht in the Netherlands. We really want to avoid that sense of urgency this year, so we are making a conscious decision to boat fewer hours per day and to stay multiple nights at more of our stops. One immediate impact, given our later-than-desired departure from Maasbracht, is that we won't be able to travel as much on the waterways of the Netherlands as we had hoped. Our original plan was to spend 30-45 days cruising the Netherlands, up to the Haarlem/Amsterdam area before heading back to France via Belgium. Unfortunately, in order to ensure that we get into France by mid-July, we will have to satisfy ourselves with 2.5-3 weeks in Netherlands waters. That isn't nearly enough time for a leisurely cruise to Haarlem, so we will only go as far as the city of 's-Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) before heading back to Maasbracht for a few days, and from there retrace last year's route through Belgium on our way to France.

We had a lovely day on the 16th for lunch and a walking tour of the town of Venlo. Venlo is in the northern part of the Limburg province on a bend in the Maas River. It has a significant amount of industry, and a very busy center city was bustling with shoppers.

We were surprised by the number of people in the center of town
on a Thursday afternoon. It was nice to see so much activity

Like many of the towns in this part of the Netherlands, Venlo suffered significant damage in WWII. Up until October 1944 it had hardly been affected by the war, but as the battlefronts approached Limburg the bombardments of the bridge on the Maas and a nearby German airbase caused significant damage in the city center. Many medieval buildings disappeared, so the city currently has a mix of the old, the very new, and the "newish" styled to look like the old.

The surviving old . . . 

The Romerhuis, from around 1490, took some damage from the 
bombardments, but was repaired

Lon in front of the Renaissance style Venlo City Hall,
originally built in 1300 and rebuilt in 1597-1599

The new . . . 

This bridge on the Venlo waterfront spans a small harbor. "The Peaceful
Warrior" sculpture resides on the peninsular park. I've seen photos where
the water of the Maas was in flood up to the level of the base of 
the statue.

A mini heat wave has been going through Europe, and our local temperatures started rising on Friday. 80's F is pretty warm for the Netherlands, but our Florida sensibilities were grateful for a little heat and it was a beautiful day to be on the water. Besides, our new bimini kept us comfortable during the 5 hours it took us to get to our next destination, a marina on an offshoot of the Maas near the town of Boxmeer. A cruiser that pulled into the marina shortly after we did was owned by a lovely Australian couple, David and Melanie, who have been doing cruising seasons in Europe for about 8 years. We enjoyed being able to share experiences over "docktails".

We had enough time and energy left to take the bikes for a quick spin through Boxmeer, which was about 2 miles from the marina. It seemed like a nice small town, and again, had that tell-tale mix of old, new, and "newish" that is indicative of the WWII 1944 front-line towns.

Boxmeer centrum was quiet on a late Friday afternoon, but from the bands setting up things promised
to get busier later. The church tower was a 1950's rebuild--the Germans had destroyed many of the
church towers in the area in 1944-45 to keep the Allies from using them for reconnaissance

The town may be relatively small, but it had a nice castle--Castle
Boxmeer. The site of the castle used to be an island in the Maas. Castles
were on this site for many centuries, but of the 18th century version,
the only thing that remains is the left third of the building above.
 The portion of the building to the right is an old age home

Saturday was a short day for us, only an hour-and-a-half to reach our destination for the next three days, a marina in the Kraaijenbergseplassen--a recreational area that consists of several lakes. The heat continued, with forecast highs near 90 F, but it was beautiful cruising in the morning. The landscape is flat, flat, flat, except for any dikes that may be present, so it was possible to see interesting features from the water without too much effort.

The H. Martinuskerk in Cuijk (the darker brown brick to the 
left) was an imposing site from the river. This is the "new" 
church, "only" about a century old. The tower in the right of the
photo is from the Gothic church of the late 1400's, which now
houses the history museum Museum Ceuclum

The monastery of Sint Agatha, continuously inhabited by the
Crosiers since 1371. It is the oldest monastery in the Netherlands,
and the only one functioning since the Middle Ages

In the stretch of land around Cuijk there were quite a few WWII
bunkers still standing on the dike

The Jan van Cuijk windmill, a corn mill from the 1860's

After we got settled we got on the bikes to head toward the nearest town, Cuijk. It must be located in a strategic position, because significant archeological artifacts from the Ice Age and Roman era have been discovered. As it turned out, Saturday, June 18, was National Archeological Day, and the Museum Ceuclum (the Roman name for present-day Cuijk) had extended hours and free admission. It was a small museum, but very well put together.

The 100-foot (35 meter) tower which houses the
museum could be climbed. We've said it before, I'm
sure we'll say it again, "have tower, will climb." 
Two floors of circular staircases followed by 2 ladders
got us to the observation level.

A panoramic shot of the Maas from the observation deck of the tower. Can you say "flat"?

Pat on the observation deck, Maas in the background. Some day
the stairs will get to be too much, but that day has not yet arrived.

The "new" church next door and a view toward
the center of Cuijk

The cemetery adjacent to the church and museum looked old,
but most of the stones were from only a few decades past. The
area seems to grow lichens and mosses with ease! Another part of 
the grounds was a sculpture garden, with old headstones incorporated
into the displays

The museum was small, but contained some amazing artifacts 
(no, Lon is not one of the ancient artifacts)

The tower still contains the original 2-person prison from the 
18th-19th centuries. I was fascinated (and amused) that they chose to
include a rat in the re-creation of prison conditions. Stealing a cow
could get you the death penalty!

We've seen this before, too--damage from WWII bombardments
on a portion of the church wall, left as a reminder of how it was

Our museum visit was followed by a quick spin around the center of town (lots of shops), dinner by one of the lakes, and a meandering return to the boat. Our "meander" took us by and through the village of Linden. The eastern part of the Netherlands has quite a few remembrances of WWII, including the memorial below, near Linden, for an American C-47 which crashed during Operation Market Garden. Four crew members and one paratrooper died in the crash. 

The memorial markers contain the names of the dead and 
an inscription in Dutch says, "Here were five lives given for our freedom"

As predicted, the heat of yesterday has been chased out by the cool temperatures and off-and-on rain of today, so it's been perfect for just "hanging out". Tomorrow promises to be brighter and we are hoping to have a touristy day in Nijmegen, said to be the oldest city in the Netherlands.