PART 2
Liz and David Saunders continue their summer of fun living and working aboard their 34ft Jetten cruiser Juneau on the waterways of Holland
After a gentle meander from our home port of Jachthaven Stenhuis in Aalsmeer to Amsterdam, Weesp, and Woudrichem, we reached the lovely town of Heusden, where we spent four nights to complete our working week (Mon to Wed) on the boat. Work done, we set off again for Maastricht, the most southern city in the Netherlands.
A couple of hours along the Bergse Maas river we stopped at a pleasant marina in Kerkdriel. The lake there is a training ground for the local dive school and we watched the students clambering in and out of the water in their cumbersome SCUBA gear. The concept of diving in Holland is a little odd because most of the water is only about 2m deep and pretty murky at that but I guess you can only work with what you’ve got!
Leaving Kerkdriel behind, we made our way past ‘s-Hertogenbosch and onto the Zuid-Willemsvaart canal which would take us south towards Maastricht. Dead straight and heavy with commercial traffic, the journey was a bit of a chore at times but it bypassed a long stretch of the river Maas, where we would have been travelling against the flow.
Unlike most of the Netherlands, this area has some elevation, which results in locks that mean business. And our business was to climb – arare thing on our travels to date. The locks were deep, quite fierce and lacking in bollards to tie onto. We did however learn the value of a sturdy boat hook when it comes to simply hanging on in a lock.
SLEEPLESS IN MAASBRACHT
Our original plan was to spend three days making our way down the Zuid-Willemsvaart but on day two, with rain hammering down on the canopy and nowhere nice to stop, we decided to press on to the end of the canal.
For most of the second day we followed a commercial barge called Carmen and were now getting rather too familiar with the sight of her stern.
Having ridden up in eight locks together, we finally parted company just before Sluis Panheel, the last lock on the canal, which drops you back down 8m to the river Maas. Most of our hard-earned height was lost in one go!
Ten hours and 70km after setting off, we pulled into a marina just outside Maasbracht in a place called Wessem, feeling slightly frazzled. We mo
