Week 35
On Tuesday morning we took the ferry to Ameland - this time taking the car - the electric bike hire for two days and the hire of a doggie trailer would have been just about as much as the cost of the car on the ferry.
Our very first stop was the beach near the lighthouse on the western end - we really wanted to see how Boeke reacted - not many people, so we could let him loose occasionally - he just loved it
On the western beach there were hundreds of steel pipes about 5 metres long and 50cm in diameter. It turned out that they were being collected that night - but they had been bolted together for about 5 months in an operation to pump 3 million cubic metres of sand on to the existing beachfront.
From the Rijkswaterstaat website
We regularly return to Ameland for maintenance of the coast. This will hold the shoreline in place. Otherwise Ameland would get smaller and smaller; the coastline would then move an average of 1 m inland each year. Extra sand off the coast is also needed to keep pace with rising sea levels in the long term.
Due to the strong erosion of the coast, the beach has become much narrower and lower, especially in the vicinity of pole 2. After sand replenishments in 2019 and earlier, we are now once again applying a large amount of sand to the beach and foreshore.
The oldest house on Ameland (1561) - which is for sale at close to €700,000 - a protected historical monument.
We had a not very good dinner out and then retired to our hotel - fairly dated, but they did allow dogs in selected rooms - with no carpet!.
The whole island is geared to tourism, with farming and service industries.
We're already planning to go back over the winter when there will be even fewer people, we imagine.
On Wednesday it was raining off and on, so we drove to some fairly deserted beaches on the eastern end and did some more walking with Boeke.
In the dunes and along the beach.
and then the ferry back to the mainland...
...with Boeke having a well-earned rest!
The new boat...
Janny managed to put a hole in the new boat! But we borrowed a slightly larger one from a brother-in-law - it was quite relaxing pottering around with the electric motor. We did have to buy a new battery because the one that came with the boat ended up in the tractor...
Just One Thing
I've had lots of time to listen to podcasts...this series about improving one's health and well-being from the BBC, captured my attention. Of course, it's more than just one thing. Happily, I seem to have been doing some of them for quite a few years already.
I've been off coffee for 3.5 years - but coffee is not so bad, apparently. And I have to drink more red wine :)
Janny took off on her own...
Preparations for the Admiralty Days Festival - officially starting on the 4th September...and we're expecting excellent weather for a change..our previous years have been wet affairs - and they couldn't hold them at all during the Covid Years.
Last week, Ben was in Barcelona...this week he is in Montreal - so much for the environmental footprint we leave behind...I really can't see people changing their flying habits or anything else for that matter - I tried to imagine the Gray Plague giving up their boats here in the Netherlands - ain't gonna happen!
Ben's photos from Montreal...
I heard an interesting podcast this week that put forward a few political viewpoints. (They say that Dutch Politics is normally always boring). A few weeks ago the Prime Minister (Rutte) announced that he would be quitting politics altogether after the next election. This seemed fair enough as he had already served 6 terms as Prime Minister. The Government had been in trouble over a few things and so the fragile coalition had broken and the whole thing is going along in an "acting" capacity until the election in November. It seems that Sigrid Kaag (the leader of one of the coalition parties) had told Rutte that she wouldn't support him in a "no confidence" vote. If it had gone to a vote, she would have become Prime Minister. So, he then made his announcement to retire, which deflated the whole no confidence idea.
Alongside this, a European Commission politician, Frans Timmermans announced that he would be returning to the Netherlands in a bid to become Prime Minister. So, his highly sought after position on the Commission became vacant and Rutte nominated a Frisian chap (with the very Frisian name Wopke Hoekstra). There was a bit of an outcry because many thought that Sigrid Kaag should have gotten the nomination...not likely after her no confidence machinations...if true, the karma tickled my fancy.
As an aside, Timmermans seems a likely choice for Prime Minister (for my feelings).
From Dutch News...
Pledging to build a ‘united left’ into a government of solidarity and trust, the new leader of the GreenLeft/Labour group Frans Timmermans addressed his first party meeting on Tuesday.
Voted leader of the GroenLinks/PvdA (Green Left and Labour Party) alliance with 92% of almost 38,000 member votes, Timmermans has officially resigned his paying job as executive vice president of the European Commission – and left himself in the hands of the Dutch electorate. At a jubilant event in a former cigarette factory on the outskirts of The Hague, Timmermans outlined his vision for a positive, left-wing government that “would not let people fall through the ice”.
“Government needs to be there in a time of profound social change,” he told some 250 activists, including PvdA leader Attje Kuiken and GroenLinks head Jesse Klaver, who had brokered the alliance and were sitting on the front row.
“This is also an industrial revolution and above all a time when through our own actions, the survival of our kind is in danger. But it doesn’t need to be…The government needs to give democratically-legitimate form to these changes, to ensure there is a reallocation [of resources] on the basis of solidarity that everyone can believe in and so nobody is left behind.”
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