Alkmaar welcomed us to another chilly morning. However we had a slightly later start than usual, as we headed out to see the cheese market at 9:30. [See also the earlier post for Fri 5 May.]
We got there in good time to get a good position to see all the cheese market activities – where they auctioned off the cheeses to the wholesale buyers and merchants. These were traditional large cheeses round and very big, weighing about 12 to 15 kg each.
Hundreds of spectators lined the market square to watch the proceedings. This also coincided with Memorial day speeches. Karen and Helen scored a photo opportunity with one of the big cheeses.
And then we re-joined the boat and cruised further up the canal before setting off on our bikes. We had lunch and our hot chocolate and coffees at the lovely little village, de Rijp, before cycling off towards Zaandam. On the way, we visited a kayak and Canoe Centre which seemed to have thousands of kayaks and canoes of all types. Setting off again, we almost lost the Sweep who had not applied the 60% rule to the published departure time.
Then we visited Zaanse Schans, which was an open air museum where there were about a half a dozen working windmills which we were able to visit and there were a number of cute little houses that had been transported to the site to make up a village atmosphere, with animals goats and ducks, etc – all very pretty and Dutch. The Windmills did things like grind mustard and corn, and one of them was set up as a sawmill – very impressive.
[Film © John and Shena Hayden]
There were large crowds here and we could easily have spent more time, but we had to get back for dinner, so we cycled on along a tree line straight road with very many pretty houses and properties – on waterfront of course. We cycled into a slight headwind, but the experienced riders made good work of it and were all back to the boat at 1745 for total of 35 km for the day. There was a little known change to the program and we rejoined the Elodie at Purmerend.
That night, the penultimate night, we had the speech night and the awards and decoration ceremony, a tradition started by Nev Conn on our previous barge and bike trip (Bruges to Paris)
Text: John and Shena Hayden. Awaiting further images… ]
Elodie Spring 17 