Tutak goes to Holland - Chapter V

So at the correct speed Tutak wandered back down the canal to join up again with the Oosterschelde at Sas van Goes.  Busy with shipping it is and a close watch must be kept on the barges showing big white moustaches.  Those ones are pushing a massive bow wave and can be so low in the water with just the heaps of sand or gravel showing.

We took the Keeten Mestgat north east to the Krammersluizen.  Turning left here would take us into the Grevelingenmeer but that was for another year.  Once through the lock we headed north and near the forbidden waters of a nature reserve.  Little buoys mark the way to a hole in the sea wall that leads to a sleepy place called Oude Tonge.  Prolific wildlife was bumped into and we scraped our way to the haven.

I'm not really a David Bellamy sort of guy so you will have to put your own names to the above.

Oude Tonge was rather nice and we found a Chinese eating house and then went a bar to watch Holland play against some other European team.  We got dressed in orange and came draped in the Nederland's flag.  They didn't realise that I am ginger and thought I had dyed for the occasion.  I was taken in hand by a large farm boy in dungarees who kept me supplied with  beer all night.  I was starting to get worried as he insisted on bear hugging me every time Holland had a shot at goal.  Everyone was getting very drunk and rather boisterous so the crew of the good ship Tutak separately went to the facilities and didn't come back.  Later in the early hours, gates were unhinged, waste bins were upended and fire extinguishers were let off in the Dutch village equivalent of football hoodlums.

Later that day we set sail with sore heads but without a police escort, we had done well.