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The beauty of having no real itinerary is the freedom to change your mind. Last night we decided to get going early and cross the inner dyke to Enkhuizen but this morning after checking the laundry facilities Ali decides to get some washing done. The harbour master provides the key and gives some friendly but unnecessary advice and instruction on how to operate the washing machine. The most helpful bit is that the 1 hour cycle is quicker than the 2 hour cycle. But he does tell us that our new destination is an interesting and worthy place to visit.
Dobie done we use the service point, where the metered 100 litres of water for €0.50 takes ages, then get going a bit before midday, bound now for the village of Urk just before the start of the inner dyke.
As it's only thirty odd miles we go directly cross country on slower roads instead of roundabout on motorways, and on the way there is some lovely and different scenery.
The whole of the Flevoland region lies an average of 5 metres below sea level and was all reclaimed during the Zuiderzee project in the early 1900's. Now, what isn't water is extremely fertile land. Because the land was drained there are no hedges, the only boundaries being canals or roads. There are sections of forest and large tracts of young green crop, but most of it is sedge and reed. Some of the reed has been cut and is either lying out or has been bundled into sheaves. Some of the sheaves are piled into old fashioned stooks.
There are also huge areas of water coming right to the road's edge and in places roads run alongside the canals whose water level is higher than the tarmac, kept in only by the dyke. The whole thing feels like living on the beach at low tide, yet it has all stayed safe and managable for over a century.
The road rises a bit nearing the village of Urk, signifying its onetime island status.
We park in one of the allocated 'campersplaaten' slots on the harbour front and plug into the electric pillar. A sign informs us the harbour master will collect the fee at some point, so we set off into town.
Urk was a very old village community whose inhabitants eked out a hard living mainly from fishing. It is still reliant on fishing but is a bit wealthier thanks to tourism and shiprepair.
The narrow back streets are quaint, postcard-perfect images of Dutch housing. Small terraces but each house having a slightly different facade and gabled roof, lanterns, tea urns, woven-reed ornaments or pottery in the windows, tidy net curtains. In the gardens little flower boxes (only a few snowdrops and polyanthus this early), wooden benches, rows of clogs and an old mangle or similar. Coloured woodwork and patterned brickwork give it all the feel of a reconstructed theme town like Crick or the Black Country museum.
Up on the headland a different, solemn image of the town is displayed. Beside the mariner's church is a large, bronze statue of a woman gazing hopefully out to sea, and on plaques all around the walled outlook are the names of fishermen who never returned, going back to the 1830's. The youngest is 8, the oldest 69. On one boat five members of the same family, and in 2015 6 were lost, 3 from one family. The bitingly cold wind here today only adds sense to the hopeless plight faced by that those who founder.
Follow the fisherwoman's gaze today and three rows of wind farms stretch to vanishing point, but these also bring a bounty with the necessary support services to the burgeoning 'renewables' industry.
We follow the road past the lighthouse onto the older fishing port. A variety of boats line the wharves from wooden luggers, through early steam and motor trawlers to modern pleasure craft. A few vessels are high and dry, winched on rails up the slipways for repair.
Heading back through the old part of town we take in more of the little details, and also notice people are a little more insular here. None of the automatic 'hellos' that we have encountered in our Dutch travels to date, perhaps that too is a legacy from it Urk's hard, island past.
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