June 2025 – Part 1 (1st to 15th)
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We spent three pleasant nights along the stretch of moorings on the Aarkanaal at Alphen aan den Rijn, but eventually we headed back along the canal to join the Oude Rijn. In the town centre we stopped briefly for food staples, and then moved further along the river to a little stretch of mooring at ‘s- Molenaarsweg, on the edge of Alphen aan den Rijn.
That mooring wasn’t the greatest -lots of rocking due to commercials rushing by, and very little in the way of safe walking with the dogs – so we moved on the next morning. Still on the Oude Rijn, we travelled for just an hour until we found an empty length of moorings at the edge of Alphen aan den Rijn (a small district named Hazerwoude-Rijndijk). Despite being close to a busy-ish road, traffic noise was fairly unobtrusive. Just a short distance from Shensi were some walking spaces for the dogs, so we ended up staying there for a couple of nights, and over this time I managed to get some prep work carried out on the wheelhouse prior to fully re-painting it
Passing along the river and very close to our mooring we noticed an eye-catching tower that was definitely worth a little research – we discovered that it was a water tower built back in 1915 designed with an open substructure of eight tapered concrete legs supporting a brick superstructure/reservoir. The water tower functioned until 1985, after which it remained empty until it was privately purchased around 1999. Between then and 2003 the structure was extensively renovated as office accommodation – the open spaces between the legs were closed with glass, a round glass structure was placed on the reservoir and an external elevator was built to the tower. In 2022, a pavilion was built at the foot of the tower for extra office space.
A couple of days later we moved slightly further along the Oude Rijn and squeezed into a mooring at Leiderdorp, just a few kilometres from the main town of Leiden. By now the weather had turned and we were frequently bombarded with rain showers, but dog walks had to be done and fortunately there was a good sized park (De Houtkamp) not too far away.
We stayed in Leiderdorp for the permitted three nights, finally moving on despite the poor weather. Fortunately we timed it well and managed our short hour’s journey to Leiden with no rain, although the wind did pick up a little. Our first targeted stop was fully occupied, so we carried on to the next mooring, which turned out to be almost ideal, right outside of the ‘Polderparc Cronestyn’, Leiden, where a large percentage of the polder was given over to dogs off-leash.
Nicki took a walk into the centre on day 2 of our visit to this area, and found a large market in progress, whilst I walked the dogs before continuing to fix things on the boat.
Having stayed the maximum permitted time of three nights (as per usual), we carried on to our next destination just shy of two hours away and arrived at Park Rozenrust, Leidschendam. This mooring was a literal perfect fit for us 20m looking for our almost 19m length, so we had it all to ourselves. The mooring was however only accessible from a little park next to it – seemingly ideal until we spotted the ‘dogs forbidden’ in and around the park! A slight conundrum as to leave the area we had to walk them through the park for several metres!
Being the rebels that we were, we simply ignored the notices (out of necessity, I would add) and risked being admonished by the locals, but fortunately, aside from a couple of passers-by acknowledging how lovely Shensi was, nothing was said about the dogs being with us and all our entrances and exits went off without a hitch. Over our stay, the weather was extremely hot with just a little rain at times, so I was able to re-varnish the port side of Shensi’s wheelhouse and her new coating was looking pretty impressive.
The last day of the first half of June and we made an early start to head into Leidschendam, a mere half an hour away, and positioned ourselves along a stretch of riverside moorings right next to a busy cycle and roadway and houses, but within just a few minutes stroll from the centre of town.
Having sorted out ropes and other paraphernalia, we quickly popped to the shops for supplies and then settled in for the Canadian Grand Prix qualifier races.
