11th - 13th April. First Impressions of Holland. Warmond and Lisse.

These narcissi, our first Dutch flowers, are in the boat yard and look very special.

We are now in The Netherlands water system. The houses in Warmond are very attractive, and there are boats everywhere!

Just round the corner the canal opens out into a lake, where we see the first of many yachts, with a windmill behind it.

We are moored on the edge of the meer, and a scout troop arrive in their dinghies. There were seven of them altogether, and they were all good sailors. We could walk back to Warmond for shopping from this island mooring.

There is a sandy beach near to the mooring for people, but just round the corner is the hondenzwemstrand, literally “dog swimming beach”. Shannon definitely approved of this!

On Saturday we sailed on across the lake, where we had to go between all these yachts, without getting in their way!

Filling up with diesel is certainly easier than in Ireland. However, it hurts to have to use white diesel!

We sailed on around Kaagerpolder and moored on a small island, one of two which nestle behind this big island. On Sunday we set off to go to Lisse, which lies on the canal to the north. This is one of many groups of cyclists we saw today.

This is a lovely converted windmill. What a place to live!

A taste of things to come. We are going to see much bigger barges in The Netherlands.

The liftbridge in the centre of Lisse opened for us. We had been told all bridges had to be paid for, but a friendly boater told us that this is now not the case, which is good!

Further on we saw these attractive canalside properties in Lisse.

For contrast there are blocks of apartments too, with colourful balconies.

We came to Lisse today as we had seen a local market advertised here. There were not as many stalls as we had expected, with fruit and veg, a cheese stall with a pen of goats and sheep, and also a blacksmith, working at his forge.

The nanny goat had three kids, which were very cute.

Back out on the lake, Shannon helped to look out for yachts ahead.

We went back to the same islands and moored on a different one this time. What a fantastic place this would be for a boat rally!