9th - 11th June. A visit to Almere-Stad, then back across Flevoland on the Hoge Vaart.

From the Lage Vaart, which is a canal stretching across Northern Flevoland, we continued into the lake, Noorde Plassen, to get to the town of Almere. We joined all the small hire boats from the resort there, which came in many different designs. We saw one big round inflatable one, with a barbeque in the middle, holding ten happy people.

In Almere we managed to find Ed and Olga's house, and moored The Puzzler at the bottom of their garden. They had kindly moved their boat to a neighbour's mooring, to make room for us. Every house here has its own waterfront, by some very imaginative designing.

We all went to the supermarket by boat, with Ed at the wheel.

We enjoyed crossing the Noorde Plassen in the sloop, and are heading for the far shore, to reach the shops. This lake is bigger than it looked on the chart!

As we arrived back at the house, Shannon was very pleased to see us again. I completed sewing our new mosquito nets on Olga's sewing machine, saving myself a few hours of hand sewing! This was a great help and was much appreciated.

Next morning we sailed to the far end of the lake Noorde Plassen, to go through the centre of Almere-Stad, on the canals. As The Puzzler can manage a bridge of 1.9 metres, the standard height here of 2.5 metres was not a problem. We found the modern architecture of the new town of Almere very interesting and varied.

As we were leaving Almere-Stad, across another lake, the view back to the town shows some more of this varied architecture.

We sailed on to the Hoge Vaart, which is the main canal running right across the southern half of Flevoland. We found this lagoon mooring, off the main canal, just to the south of Almere. We have been so lucky with the weather, with little daytime rain, and plenty of sun.