| What are we doing?
November 3rd, 2002 Across the Netherlands from Top to Toe: Waddendyke-Schiermonnikoog (apocryphal) The time had finally come for stage 1 of 'Across the Netherlands from Top to Toe': Schiermonnikoog - Kloosterburen. That is, we were hoping so. That is, we believed so. That is, we had a deep-rooted conviction that this was wat it was going to be. Day 1  And so, on Saturday, November 2nd, we cheerfully made our way to Amsterdam as a small delegation (van der Schelden, de Gisser and myself), and via the American Hotel (popularly called 'Americain') and a Vondelpark plagued by storm damage (in which Schelden proudly posed by the tree that fell down for shock when he gazed upon it), to Holland Diving, along the Amstelveenseweg. We had been there once before, in February, during the previous failed attempt (without de Gisser, but with van Zijntergen and Weij). And as anyone who has ever been acquainted with Schelden is likely to do, this visit was vividly remembered. We were supplied with appropriate outfits in very short order not just because of this: this was also due to the professionality with which personnel present again performed that task. And it was cheap too: €15 rent per suit, and a €100 deposit for all suits together.
 Meanwhile Mike Smith (Lydia's brother) got himself a similar suit in Haarlem, and Marco Neumann moved towards us through Amsterdam, swearing. He namely had some car trouble and therefore ran a little bit later than agreed. The car trouble, by the way, disappeared spontaneously, shortly before we met him along the Amstelveenseweg. He did look somewhat pale because of it, but never mind that.
And even his incredible body seamlessly fit into one of those suits ("What do you think of it, Chielie?" "It's ah... ...large."). And so he split contentedly, back towards Utrecht and another nightshift-for-Securicor, with all them suits, and de Gisser, Schelden and I made for the Zeedijk. This took some doing, because we positioned ourselves at the wrong tram stop at first (where, then again, there were two very charming young French girls), but in the end we got to Nam Kee without further problems, there to have dinner. Well, there to order dinner. Well, there to have a big fight about that dinner order. 
See 'cause Schelden had explained to me that he wanted to have Sia Tjieuw, "with rice", but he then had rapidly moved to the lavatory, just before the benignly smiling Chinese appeared to take our order. So when he said: "Sia Tjieuw, you mean, with white lice?" I said "yes exactly". Well no. Little did I know, that Schelden desired to receive that white lice apalt flom the lest, in a bowl. Schelden of course did know this, and so he ignited in cold rage, and flung the book of children's songs that he had just bought at the Oudemanhuispoort smack against unsuspecting toothpicks and innocent jar of sambal. There! Too much for the ladies to our right, who were busily occupied with Nam Kee's Oysters. It was a good thing that Schelden became placid after that, due to the jasmin tea.  An hour later we were already contentedly sitting in café 'de Ooievaar' (the Stork), where de Gisser was the odd man out by drinking Jack Daniels and coke, but Schelden and I deeply immersed ourselves in delicious gin (van Wees, naturally tender, from the distillery that bears the same name as the bar we were in), served in whitecold shot glass. Hohips, a great start.
Day 2 The next morning, at eight o' clock, Mike Smith tore unto my inner courtyard in his blue car. Via Alkmaar, where Jochem's beloved daughter Lanca proceeded to puke in visually edifying manner, and we therefore made a short wipe-off stop, we passed northward through icily windy weather, and across the Afsluitdijk to Groningen. Since Schelden was delayed, we found ourselves in Leens an hour early. And to go look for an open catering establishment, at church time on Sunday morning in Groningen villages like Leens, is a futile exercise. So therefore we backtracked 18 km., to Lauwersoog, where in the Grand Café, nicely warm coffee and merriness befell us. 
An hour later we were back in Leens, and met our mudwalking guide: Kwant, Lammert Kwant. I had pictured him differently, measured by an article in national newspaper de Volkskrant of last August, about a trek through the gardens of Teding (a dam between Dongeradeel and Ameland, constructed in 1870 should, by way of cross-protrusions, have ensured a better silting of the sandy flats in between, so that this part of the Wad might have been turned into fertile farming land, late in the twentieth century - but the Wad made mince of the dam, nothing silted up at all, and the gardens of esquire Teding van Berkhout never materialized): as a surly, sturdy, tall bloke with a beard and a faded sou'wester. Nothing of it: Lammert Kwant is a good-natured, beardless lean man.  That Lammert Kwant is an experienced guide showed itself not just in his website and the fact that he was the only one willing to walk to Schiermonnikoog at this time of year but, whilst Jochem, Mike and I got into our diving suits, also in the way he immediately added suspense to the situation. "Well, Henk had better make a move on, otherwise we won't make it in time. There is a critical moment, and it is rapidly approaching."
 Henk, meanwhile, was motoring somewhere near Winsum, heavily delayed because Albert van Geyningen, due to troubles affecting the national railways, could not make it to Utrecht by train and therefore had to be picked up in Den Bosch unexpectedly. Schelden did, of course, not blame this on the railway company or its troubles, but on Albert. Who would have been left behind had it been up to Lammert too. "Well, you can choose to decide to want to bring this man along. You can also choose to be in time to go mudwalking." Yes, but Lammert, we are the Wandelsoc., and so there shall be none of this, without Ab. One for all, all for none.
Lammert nonetheless maintained a gloomy view. "I hope you're sporty types. What you don't want is a short fat one continuously falling behind, holding up the rest." I praised ourselves lucky to be seasoned long distance marchers; and that Bert van Prijzen had, that morning, as during a practice walk with his Hilda he got hard rain flung horizontally into his face (Bert has this more often, with his face, in Niftrik horses bite at it), she'd issued an injunction barring him from participating. Poor Bert, by the by. Later that day it would turn out he had, for destitution, spent the day aimlessly wandering around Schiermonnikoog on his own, in his diving suit, to at least have some idea of the experience he was missing out on. What hero, what way to be First Friend of the Wandelsoc.. 
Thankfully Schelden, de Gisser, Neumann and van Geyningen made it in time after all. Swearing, moaning and groaning, they pulled themselves into their suits in the icy cold. Since Lydia had by now taken off in Mike's car with Lanca, to spend the day with the friends of Jochem in Eext who had previously been so friendly in temporarily storing our oaken armchair, we then moved to the Waddendyke in two cars, Neumann's rickety Citroën, and Lammert's sturdy Volvo.  The Waddendyke turns out to look exactly the same everywhere: like a barren domain for sheep. Over it we swiftly descended to the salt marsh, and proceeded through it at the same murderous speed. This was not an easy thing to do. It was the marsh (land outside the dykes that is overgrown with plants, and floods at high tide) in which our feet sank deeply into the mire and the going was therefore tough. All in all, we managed, though. At first, this toil seemed particularly to have a cleansing effect on the bladders of the gathered rabble.
But as we left the marsh and climbed unto the real wad, and it turned out that, there too, the going was rough through swampy layers of mud, Lammert's warnings of overheating in the diving suits began to have a more realistic character by the minute. Stupidly stubborn as, being an Aries, I after all am, this led to my taking off half the diving suit whilst carrying my backpack and coat between my teeth, so as not to get them wet, and attempted to beat off de Gisser, who kept trying to help me take off the unruly suit that kept sucking itself back into place. 
The rest managed to hold out a bit longer than I did, but this was logical, since I was the one with the camera, thus repeatedly ran ahead to take pictures of the riff-raff approaching. The mud-flats remain to be a photogenic environment, even in great haziness as there was at that moment, and notwithstanding the storm damage (incurred during the enormous storm of October 27th, the heaviest since 1990) that Lammert observed had been done to the mussel beds we passed. All the more so since the water level was unusually low today, according to Lammert. As a rule, he told us, one would be walking through water up to one's knees at this point.  This would have made the going even more tough of course, so we were very happy that the tide was so low, especially since we were in a bit of a hurry. This did not lessen the fact that, shortly after we passed the first buoy, we stopped for sandwiches and decreasing the amount of clothing we were wearing. The piercing cold that had been our part in the morning, had by now become a thing of the past altogether, and the clarity of the weather increased visibly too. So much so, even, that it wasn't long before we could discern on the horizon, lying low behind the scattering flights of birds, the dunes of Schiermonnikoog. Jochem: "Is that where we're going? Than I'm gonna go and walk straight there, goodbye!" Lammert: "Yes, that is where we're going, sort of - but along this route.", indicating a westerly course parallel to the island, with his sounding stick.
 And this course first led by what Lammert stubbornly called a treetrunk, but really was a long branch, with two bustles of seaweed in top. "I don't have a clue as to what it is doing there, only the person who put it there does, but it has been there for years and is an important landmark for the mudwalking guides.", said Lammert.
 Lammert had left a memorial brick here once, placed on a plastic bag so it would not sink into oblivion. But despite efforts put into this, he now couldn't find it anymore. Not even the GPS (indispensable attribute for the mudwalking guide, who has had to make do with the sextant for so long) could alter that. Things that do not sink away, float away, is the conclusion that forces itself upon us.
Some good conversations later, about among other things Lammert's job as a member of WAR, the so aptly abbreviated Wadden Advisory Council, soon to be disbanded and replaced by a much smaller variant, and about parachuting (I had grown so weary by now that I wasn't ashamed of practicing some exit-jumps, whilst mudwalking), we arrived at Schier's coastline, by the old reference beacon (a kind of wooden pyramid that serves as a landmark for mudwalkers and seafarers; Lammert explained that, all over the Wadden islands there are beacons like those, marked out on seamaps, and that in order to be able to keep them apart not one looks like another). 
Ahead of us lay the ferry dam, below a breathtaking sunset, against which the silhouettes of the vintage hotel busses, moving from ferry to village, stood out beautifully. Time for a group portrait in diving suits, for which I had to battle fiercely (especially Prakke kept stupidly thwarting things), of which Lammert sadly could not be part, since he had to take it. After that we changed, on the dyke, as the cold immediately struck again. Which was particularly bad news for myself, because I had left my shoes in the car with Lydia, and so had to go about in wet socks.  Which did have an amusing side because of the foot trail I left upon entering Hotel van der Werff, classic establishment at Schier. Lammert does not go there too often, but the Wandelsoc. of course felt right at home there: Prince Bernhard's picture in hunter's uniform is on the wall, the interior is particularly reminiscent of Hotel de Wereld in Wageningen (in which the German army capitulated in 1945), and the staff is so well-trained that it is an utter blessing.
Small wonder therefore, that Lammert had the opportunity to be astonished when we remained utterly civilized when an older, balding man, obviously present in order to enjoy peace and quiet (he was smoking a pipe and reading literature, his wife was silently doing the bookkeeping and the both were seated in the comfortable red plush and wooden armchairs in the lounge behind the overcrowded bar), asked us if he "could perhaps ask us to be somewhat quieter - in the room next to this you can make as much noise as you want". I even said "Why, certainly you can.", and Schelden considerably mitigated the volume of his speech of thanks towards Kwant, Lammert Kwant (since it was this of course, that irritated the gentleman).  But we're still the Wandelsoc., and so Schelden did frighten the life out of those people upon departure, by instigating that otherwise quiet departure with a shrill "Gen-tle-men!" (the bookkeeping lady sat up rigidly in her chair, eyes popping out), and once back in the taxi towards the ferry dam I did fulminate quite a bit about how I'd have wanted to whack that effing sod all the way back to his maker. To the amusement of Lammert, who by now was pretty much starting to suss out how we work. And who had ample chance to do so. For when we, in mortal peril, had descended from the taxi bus at the ferry (the woman driver, who failed to notice Albert, still bent over his backpack, tying it tight in the side opening of the bus, slammed shut the sliding door, catching his head between it and the post - so far this does not seem to have had any long term consequences, for Ab), we suddenly recognized someone in the line waiting by the baggage carts.
"Oy, there's that Belgian!" And so whaddaya know, there after all was Bert, with Hilda. A wonderful reunion, sealed with silly anecdotes and coffee on that gorgeous ship, during the voyage back. 
Once on the other side, silliness increased rampantly. For there, in Lauwersoog, a distasteful bickering over logistics towards Leens developed. And of course Schelden was the only one to feel as he did, namely that everyone should squeeze themselves into two cars that were way too small for that, so that Leens would not have to be visited again. This led to an excellent fit on his part, since at the moment the bus, in which Prakke en Neumann were sitting by now, left for Leens, Schelden decided that it really should all go differently, ran after it screaming loudly ("HEY!!!!") and proceeded to pound its side relentlessly, whilst jumping up and down, gesticulating wildly and hollering: "NEU-MANN MUST GET OFF THE BUS!!! NEU-MANN MUST GET OFF THE BUS!!!!!!" The bus left, as said, with Neumann and Prakke in it, both waving at Schelden benignly. I have seldom spotted a grin this wide on Bert's face, and my own mutt spoke volumes too. Lammert and Hilda, however, were flabbergasted. Yes, dear people, that is the Wandelsoc. for ya. Back at the parking lot of Printing Business De Marne the Prakkes, Mike, Henk, Raymond and I waited there for some twenty minutes, as the others took the Rover back to the Waddendyke, there to pick up the cars of Lammert and Marco, whereupon Bert and Hilda drove south, packing van Geyningen as luggage. Schelden, meanwhile back in Leens, went on to complain a bit further about the proceedings, but I nipped that in the bud by explaining to him that not everyone likes to bring people together as closely as he does, and his plan to stuff us into two cars too small for it was therefore an uncool one. 
Befittingly repacked we then left for Garnwerd, via Ezinge, Lammert's place of residence, and along secondary roads (Kwant continued to guide us, from his crackerjack Volvo), where just like in february, we would have greatly enjoyed dining in the stateroom of Hotel Hammingh. Alas, it was not to be, because Hammingh was shut tight. We therefore said goodbye to our unsurpassed guide, thanking him profusely and agreeing to repeat this affair sometime, but in the right manner: from north to south, from the northernmost tip of Schiermonnikoog to the parking lot in Kloosterburen, so that 'Across the Netherlands from Top to Toe' may run its full course. 
After that we went westward in the two remaining cars. We lost sight of one another even before the Afsluitdijk but, as it turned out later, had all had dinner at McDonald's: Marco, Henk and Raymond in Drachten, before driving on to Amsterdam via the Afsluitdijk, Jochem, Lydia, Lanca, Mike and I in Lelystad, before returning to Haarlem via Almere. Thus we must have crossed eachother's route again somewhere around Haarlem. Life in the Wandelsoc. is always noteworthy, this just goes to say.  And quite apart from that this was a fine meal, of pommes frittes, quarterpounder, cheesburger and cappucino-flurry. I must keep tasting that at least once a year: for he who eats at McDonald's, again knows why God had not intended it so. With thanks, on behalf of the Prakkes too, to Ronald McDonald: awful pictures, are the result, one would almost go there because of it.
To your health gentlemen, excellent walking there. Schiermonnikoog awaits. |