Friday 19th – Monday 22nd
August - Paris then off to the Netherlands
Ahhh
Paris….we’re staying once again with David and have been pulling down his
hedge. How do you put a 10m x 3m hedge
in the trailer to take to the tip in Paris? Proof of residency, vehicle height
restriction of 2m…we’re getting through the tip runs…slowly!! At least
everyone’s left Paris and we’re here doing battle in the street without too
much traffic.
Oh,
our aching joints……the hedge took 2 days to chop and cart…..then the fence…well
cuz David doesn’t do privacy screening lightly….this was a mammoth
erection! Height: 2.5m, length 16m,
number of panels: 8 (with 16 timber lengths per panel), total number of timber
lengths: 640. Two days later and all
completed! We realize how unprepared we
are to take up our rightful place in the UK Olympics next year…hmmm the single
malt tour tempts us instead….later on it was wine and bubbly to celebrate -
topped off with another wonderful Jodie meal!
Thursday
was a day of rest….aching knees, fence completed...what else to do but see a
movie. The teenage girls were very keen
to see Captain America. Jim bravely took
the wheel as we headed to the other side of Paris with Jodie as his trusty
navigator and Janet and girls in the back seat….as he veered towards the Arch
de Triomphe roundabout a sweat emanated from Jim’s neck as he saw what lay
ahead….no lanes, cars going in all directions, 7 exit routes, and an assumption
that to get through it one closes the eyes and pushes forward just like the
Parisians do…..there was silence as we steered towards it, got cut off and
headed down a side street (luckily) avoiding the worst intersection in
Paris. Whilst he went with the girls to
the film, Jodie and I did some window shopping and perusing.
The
next day it was goodbye for this year to Paris and we set off for Hoorn near
Amsterdam in the Netherlands. By the
time we hit Antwerp in Belgium it was late Friday afternoon with a 2 hour
bottle neck skirting the city.
The
country through Belgium and the Netherlands was flat and lush - with the land
below sea level there were many canals, windmills and rivers which all help to
keep the country drained. Enkhuisen and
Hoorn – seafood, bikes, bike paths, markets, quietness and politeness.
We’d
met Jan-Kees and Marja at Ngepi Camp in Namibia, so we were keen to see how
they’d got on after our shared incident with the deadly African buffalo on the
bank of the Okavango. That was the last
time we’d seen them so it was catch up and meet them in their world so many
months later! We shared stories and photos of Africa – especially their one
about the hungry bull elephant chasing their car in Chobe, Botswana…..
They
took us to Amsterdam – a wonderful afternoon of boating along the canals – the
sights included bridges, locks, streets with bikes, buildings dating from
c1660, churches, windows with women parading their talent, house boats, a house
boat for homeless cats. Then the walking
trip – coffee shops, bars, hash shops, open-air parks and cobbled streets.
