A friend of mine, Julius, was joining me today for a couple of days on this trip. I woke up to a txt from him letting me know that he’d be in Groningen at noon. So I had a leisurely morning, got some more diesel (just in case), and some helpful advice from the local harbor master, who also ‘booked’ me a passage through the various remote-controlled bridges in the city of Groningen. That is, just before my departure she phoned the control station who would then track my progress on their cameras and open the bridges upon my approach. And that worked indeed beautifully! The only time I had to wait for ~10 or 15 minutes was at a railway bridge which, of course, could only be opened when schedules allowed.
Despite the good progress I didn’t make it to the railway station in time for Julius’ arrival because the lockie of the handful of manually operated bridges in central Groningen decided to have his lunch break a quarter of an hour early (officially from 12 to 1pm). So I cycled over to the station to pick up Julius and we had lunch as well.
Exactly at 1pm the lockie was back and opened the bridge I had been stuck behind, and once it was lowered again he hopped on his bicycle and raced ahead to open the next bridge for us, and so on. Very nice service. We drove through a lot of duckweed and, once we’d left the low bridges behind, we stopped in Groningen’s Zuiderhaven to clean the engine’s water filter. It was completely clogged and water flow had almost ceased.
We then continued on the Eemskanaal and turned into Winschoterddiep to leave Groningen to the southeast. After a short while we also left the Winschoterdiep behind and turned into Drentsche Diep, a lovely winding canal river that brought us into Zuidlardermeer, which is quite a big lake. We moored on the eastern shore, at a public mooring near Meerwijck. Our map showed a bridge to a restaurant but it didn’t exist anymore. So we had to take the boat and drive over there for a beer and dinner. I need a dinghy.
