Tilburg to Oirschot

The day dawned bright and clear and not much wind so at 9.00 we pulled our lines in and headed away from Tilburg.  The first hour was lovely, positively balmy in the sunshine but we could see huge clouds building behind us.  They looked very ominous and soon blanked out the sun and the temperature dropped dramatically.  Just as we approached a lock it began to hail.  Cold?  Well, just a little bit.

This time I was better prepared and had my rope-over-bollard thingy ready, and the bollards were too big!  So I had to revert to throwing, only took 3 attempts this time.  I'll master it eventually! 

The Wilhelmina Canal is lovely, and in summer when the leaves are out it must be beautiful.  

It is really peaceful, we only saw one other boat, a huge sand barge, and a rowing boat, crewed by young girls who looked even colder that we were.

We passed through 12 movable bridges, 2 different kinds of lift bridge and a swing bridge.  

One kind of lift bridge

Another kind of lift bridge

I had to call the first bridge to ask them to let us through and after that the next few bridges were all being prepared for us as we approached them. You can tell this is happening because the bridges have 2 traffic lights one above the other.  They are both red when the bridge is closed and when they start to prepare the bridge for opening the top one turns green.  When the bottom red one goes out you may proceed through the bridge. Clever stuff this canal technology.  I find the locks fascinating.

Now we are tied up to the canal side in a town called Oirshot.   Half an hour after tying up a huge floating crane thing moved in just a couple of metres from our bow to work on the side of the canal where they are doing a great deal of work to turn a muddy bank into a lovely promenade with grass slope behind it.  

Ian offered to move but the driver assured him we are not in his way. 

The weather is not looking good for tomorrow so we might just be here for two days.  We took a walk into town and it looks rather nice, quite a good spot to shelter from the elements.