Leaning Towers, Mummies and a Virtual Reality Fish River

Monday 04 – Thursday 07 April 2022

Following on from our last post, we drove from Gouda to Delft and parked just outside the town centre in a wooded area called the Delftse Hout. It was only a short walk from there into Delft itself. The weather was absolutely terrible; one of those days where keeping the camera reasonably dry is a real challenge.

The historic centre of Delft is really compact so we had a good wander round the streets and visited two churches – the Oude (old) and Nieuwe (new). A combined ticket costing €6.50 each covered both – bargain!

As the Oude Kerk came into sight, Mark exclaimed “Yikes, that’s wonky”. We learned inside that a canal was in the way when construction of the church started in the early 14th century, so they diverted the canal and got to work. The filled-in section of canal mustn’t have provided a solid enough foundation. Not to worry – they did a bit of corrective work as they went to try to stop the tower leaning (a not overly successful attempt by the looks of things, but I guess it IS still standing), which is why it seems to have a bit of a twist in the middle.

We were assured that it has been “stabilised” and is closely monitored, which sounded somewhat reassuring until we found out that they don’t often ring the biggest bell in the tower, just in case….

William the Silent (one of the many Williams of Orange) is big in Delft. He was instrumental in the Seven Provinces breaking away from the Spanish Netherlands (which covered, more or less, modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands) in the “Dutch Revolt” of the late 16th century, so is considered the father of the Dutch nation. He was assassinated in Delft in 1584, which seems to have done his image no harm at all. We didn’t go to the museum in Delft where you can allegedly still see the hole made by the very bullet that killed him in a stairwell, the museum being closed on Mondays. There’s a stained glass window commemorating William (in the centre) in the Oude Kerk:

There are some interesting people buried in the church; among others, Van Leeuwenhoek (who developed early microscopes in the 1670s) and Vermeer (the artist).

The weather was still terrible when we got to the main square and the Nieuwe Kerk:

The Nieuwe Kerk houses the actual mausoleum of William the Silent:

His burial set a bit of a trend, with later stadhouders (William the Silent’s job title; it may not have officially been a hereditary job but let’s just say that everyone who held it seems to have had “of Orange” after their name) and pretty much all of the Dutch royals (the monarchy was created in the early 19th century) buried in the Nieuwe Kerk.

One corner of the church was partitioned off when we visited but there was a window so you could look down on the builders and information boards to tell you what they were doing: they’re building an extension to the Royal Crypt as the current one is almost full. I wonder if the current batch of royals get to choose their spots?

Overnight: Camper Park N205 (04 April)

After visiting Delft, we drove about an hour North to Camper Park N205. It’s one of those places where, as you drive in, you wonder what it used to be. It’s not particularly pretty but it’s really well set up and we thought it was well worth the €19 Euros it cost us including electricity:

On Tuesday morning we drove further North, past Amsterdam, and on towards Volendam. We’ve left Amsterdam to one side for now for logistical reasons, but it’s still on our “To Do” list.

We stopped on the way to do some shopping at a large Albert Heijn supermarket:

We’d read online that Albert Heijn was the top of the range Dutch supermarket chain. It was very nice – definitely more Waitrose than Tesco. It turned out to be one of those supermarkets where you need the loyalty card to get the special offer “Bonus” prices. As luck would have it, the cashier very kindly tip-tapped away on the till and gave us the Bonus prices anyway on our shopping, and told us we could download the app to get the loyalty card. Very good of him, we thought. We’ve now got the app.

One thing we’ve discovered is that not everywhere in the Netherlands takes Mastercard. So far, my card has failed to work at both big supermarket chains (Albert Heijn and Jumbo) and at our overnight stop at Leeuwarden. It’s worked fine at other overnight stops and on the one occasion we’ve filled up with fuel.

Continuing on to Volendam, we got ourselves set up on the aire there before heading off to explore the town. It’s clearly a very touristy place, with some very upmarket-looking housing on the walk into the centre, then the strip along the front was suddenly all a bit Blackpool.

Moving away from the front, we had a good wander around. The area of the town known as “the labyrinth” was impressive, full of little higgledy-piggeldy streets and houses packed in around little canals (with some little streets even having their own drawbridges over the canals to access them):

Overnight: Roompot Marinapark Volendam (05 April)

Our overnight stop was on an aire next to a marina and a large and very shiny-looking holiday park. Here’s the marina and some of the holiday park buildings to the right (there must have been hundreds of the little houses with more being built):

The aire itself is well set out although the bays between the hedges really are too small for two vans (which is the official occupancy). It isn’t a problem at this time of year though as there were only a handful of vans in the place.

The charging was a bit odd: it’s supposed to be €6 between 10am and 5pm and €14 between 5pm and 10am and there’s a big sign up at the entrance setting that out. We arrived at lunchtime. A young lad came round to collect the money at 9pm and insisted we only owed €14 not €20 as we were leaving by 10am the next morning.

We headed off on Wednesday morning towards the Afsluitdijk, which is a 32km long causeway between North Holland and Frisia. You can see it as a thin yellow line on the map below (Amsterdam would be at the bottom of the peninsula on the left hand side of the map):

The Afsluitdijk was started in the 1920s and completed in the early 1930s. Plans had been in the offing for decades, but were put into action following the terrible floods of 1916. The Afsluitdijk closed off the Zuiderzee (as it was called) to create the freshwater IJsselmeer.

It’s an amazing construction:

There was plenty of work going on when we crossed, which we found out about when we stopped at the excellent (and free) visitor centre near the Eastern end of the Avsluitdijk.

One aim of the work is to upgrade the dyke (which we were told was in fact a dam as it has water on both sides), including by the fitting of a new design of concrete blocks to the seaward side.

They are also adding other features, for example a “fish river”: here’s Mark engrossed in a virtual reality explanation of the fish river and how it will help wildlife to pass between the sea and the IJsselmeer.

From there, we continued to the small village of Wieuwerd, which is famous for two things. One is a seventh century hoard of Frankish gold found near the village that is now in the museum in Leiden. The other is a very strange phenomenon in the crypt of the village’s unassuming-looking (and surprisingly non-wonky) church:

In 1765, carpenters found that eleven bodies in the crypt of the church had somehow become mummified. Mark asked the obvious question: what were they doing opening the coffins in the crypt in the first place? The answer was that an unusually well-preserved body had been found in a coffin outside, so that probably aroused their curiosity. We didn’t push the point by asking who opened the coffin outside and why….

Of the eleven bodies in the crypt, seven were later mysteriously stolen (whether one by one or as a “job lot”, we don’t know). Four bodies are still there.

The four remaining mummies are:

• a young girl (circa 14 years old) who died around 1610
• a woman who died around 1618
• a man who died due to a dental abcess (no date given)
• the goldsmith Stellingwerf who died in 1705

Here’s a picture of one of them from the notice board in the car park:

They’ve all somehow become naturally mummified, with each now only weighing around 4kg. Science has not been able to prove exactly how/why this happened, although some birds hung from the ceiling as an experiment in 1930 similarly became mummified (and are still hanging there). There is good air flow through the crypt from vents on each side. Perhaps this and the combination of temperature and humidity were responsible? Odd…. If it happens here, you’d think it would happen in other places too?

After arriving at our next overnight stop at Leeuwarden, we had a wander round the centre of the town. This is a much larger place than the Dutch towns we’ve visited so far, and much of the centre was quite modern.

Oh look, another wonky Dutch church. We seem to be seeing more and more wonky buildings as we go along. This one is the Oldehove. The church tower was going to be the tallest in the Netherlands when it was started in 1529. The builder noticed that it was sinking in one corner but decided to carry on regardless. Work was finally stopped in 1532 and the tower remains unfinished:

Overnight: De Nieuwe Leeuwarder Jachthaven (06 April)

A nice quiet overnight stop, albeit round the back of some kind of industrial plant and in a yacht marina that could easily be the set for a WW2 POW film. Mark muttered “Arbeit macht frei” as we swung through the brick pillars at the entrance. That was before he had even seen the complex of old wooden huts that make up most of the site….. €18 got us a spot for the night with electricity.

Friday morning saw us driving out East, almost as far as the German border. Here we visited the star-shaped fortress of Bourtange, built during the Dutch Revolt in the late 16th century to control the main road between Groningen and the German border.

It was a cold dull blustery day with some serious squalls passing through, so perhaps not the best weather to enjoy a wander around the exterior. The interior was pretty deserted, though we can imagine that it must look a lot more attractive when full of visitors on a nice summer’s day:

Continuing our journey through this North-Eastern corner of the Netherlands, we drove to Borger where we spent Thursday night.

Overnight: Camperpark Nuuverstee (07 April)

Crikey – we arrived in a howling gale with hailstones bouncing off SOK’s roof and chose our spot based on which one looked most sheltered:

The reception was closed and on using the telephone provided to contact the owners, we were told to choose a pitch and pay the next morning (€20.20 including the tourist tax, which some places seem to charge and others don’t mention; does this mean it doesn’t apply everywhere?).

Surely the weather must improve at some point!

In the meantime, we’ll just keep donning waterproofs and plodding on as usual….