Tag: canal

Day 512 – Rotterdam to Amsterdam

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Not me, of course. I’m not allowed in other countries and this is very much in other countries.

No, this is a timelapse shot in 2013, but which (mysteriously) “couldn’t be published right away due to restrictions”. There’s no indication as to what those restrictions are or were, but at the end of last year they were either lifted or ignored and now we have a 10 minute trip through the flat lands of Holland The Netherlands (happy now, TA?).

In 2013 a special transport over water left from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. A timelapse camera was installed at 30 mtrs high. The resulting film gives a unique and stunning view of the old Dutch waterways, in 4K. And, you will pass a few dozen different bridges that all open before your eyes. Images were shot with a Canon 550d at an interval of 3 seconds, totalling around 30.000 pictures taken.

A couple of notes here: the camera appears to be attached to some sort of kite or balloon. And if the camera wasn’t attached to the boat in question, it would be able to get through a lot of those bridges a whole lot more quickly.
BUT SEE UPDATE BELOW

There are a lot of places along this route that, should you find yourself on the wrong side of the canal, you’re staying that side for a while. I was quite surprised about that in a country as small as Holl… The Netherlands.
Anyway, this video has made me want to go and do a European canal trip again:

But that would also mean traveling to another country, and as I mentioned above…

UPDATE: Thanks, Dave.

It’s a piece of equipment for (Royal Dutch) Shell, apparently.
That’s my balloon theory blown up out of the water then. (see what I did there?)

Popping in

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Well, hello.

I’ve been having the same problem logging into the back of the blog as I had last time we were over in Europe. That’s why I haven’t been in touch.

Plus we’ve been busy drinking wine.

Fortunately, the good news is that this was an intermittent problem, and this is one of those times that things are working, so I’m diving in.

The canal trip is going well. We’ve just moored up in Auxerre: the biggest place we’ve been to since we left Paris. It’s been a very leisurely trip down the canal, mooring up wherever we feel like overnight and stopping off for lunch or dinner on any appropriate bank.

The boat has been great, the people have been friendly, my French has been surprisingly good, the wine has flowed freely.

There’s a city to explore now, so please excuse me…

I’ll check in again when and if I can.

Thanks for reading.

Sorry, I’m busy

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While I’m stuck at home mending my leg, I thought I’d finish off the organisation of our trip away in June/July. It’s “only” 102 days away and I’m hoping to be mobile again by then.
There are a couple of overnight hotels to book, a train journey here (and back again) to organise, seats to choose on the flights – the details.

And then there’s the boat.

We’re going for to live on a boat for a week in the French region of Burgundy. They do wine there. It’s going to be great. Part of living on the boat will be taking the boat along a canal there. A leisurely trip along a waterway, from pretty point A to picturesque point B. It sounds heavenly, and I’m sure it will be, but there’s a bit more to it than I thought.

Their Captain’s Handbook PDF is FORTY pages long. There are Youtube videos on how to tie up your boat, how to steer your boat, how to get on and off your boat, how to approach locks, how not to approach locks, “waterway etiquette” etc etc etc. There are waterway signs, several different kinds of traffic lights and I’ll be honest, it’s got me a little panicky.

The section of “How To Start Your Engine” is five paragraphs long.

I have plenty to read and plenty to learn.

Normal service here may be mildly truncated in the run up to our trip.

Sorry, I’m busy.