Zeewolde and Harderwijk
Approaching Zeewolde from the lake, (Zeewolde is a town in the Flevoland province in the central Netherlands situated in the polder of Flevoland with a small lake called the Wolderwijd to the east. It was founded in the 1980s so is a relatively new town.) the shoreline seemed to be dotted with lots of sandy beaches and looked to be quite picturesque.
We had a choice of three potential mooring areas, and chose to tie up in the new harbour next to the town centre.
Once in situ we took a walk round to the Havenkantoor’s office to check in, but he wasn’t in so we popped into the town to replenish some supplies for our stay before returning to relax on the stern in the shade for a couple of hours.
Once it seemed to cool down we went for a lovely walk along the shoreline – it was an interesting arrangement with separate beaches for children, sports, surfing and at the far end for the dogs. They had a good time chasing sticks and swimming, and then we went back (via a bar) for dinner and a good night’s sleep.
Our first full day in Zeewolde started with a nice long walk, followed by a look around the town, another unsuccessful attempt to see the Harbourmaster in his office and a quiet, restful afternoon on the boat. (He caught up with us in the evening though!)
After our second night in Zeewolde we moved on to what we thought would be a fairly nondescript town, Harderwijk, but it actually turned out to be a great little place. (Harderwijk is a municipality and city almost at the exact geographical centre of the Netherlands and is on the western boundary of the Veluwe. The southeastern half of the municipality is largely forests.) Firstly though we had to find our way into the harbour for a mooring – easier said than done, as we were following a description that was a few years old and the harbour area had been redeveloped since then and did not entirely match up with suggested entry routes. Still, with a little to-ing and fro-ing we managed to find our way in and picked up a reasonable mooring near the network of three lifting bridges. So, all settled in and off we went with the dogs for a quick recce of the place and to stretch our legs, feeling pretty good about it all.
Slight problem though, when we got back a little while later a trip boat had moored up in front of us ….. and moved our boat back! It was only one bollard backwards, but how rude! Still, on our walk we had stumbled upon another ideal mooring spot, and decided that we’d move over there and avoid any further issues. And having arrived there we were in sight of a working windmill and next to the boat harbour for the old ships. Although not large, the boats were quite interesting to see and to watch them coming past during the day.
The town still had parts of its old walled fort, and it was quite a pretty place with lots of ‘oooh’ moments when we came across some of the houses and statues etc.
Day 2 we woke up to a warm day, and made our way around the outskirts of the town enjoying the atmosphere. We found a lovely restaurant – Brownies&downieS which did the nicest iced coffees, after which we parted company with Nicki popping off to look around the Marius Van Dokkum museum whilst I had a mooch around before heading back to the boat with the dogs.
Nicki was gone for a couple of hours – she had spent most of the time wandering round the museum and was very excited over some of the exhibits she had seen. Nearly all of them had been painted by the museum’s namesake and they were rather quirky and different to the usual dusty masterpieces housed in art museums. Below are many, many photos that she took of the paintings; when she showed them to me later on, we decided to go back and see if any were for sale as they were so unique but unfortunately the artist didn’t sell the originals, only prints. But we weren’t put off and ended up with a print of Van Dokkum’s Noah’s Ark.
Noah’s Ark 
So we ended up our day with an interesting painting for the boat, which now takes pride of place above the tv in the salon.
Next day we moved on again, hoping to stop in a small ‘wild’ mooring but sadly we couldn’t see that we could get in easily and so moved on to Donde Hond (where we had previously stayed for a few nights on our way up the river Eem).
