The Rhine from Germany splits into the Waal and the Neder Rijn just east of Nijmemen.
The Neder Rijn splits into the Ijssel which continues North to Zwolle and continues West and just south of Utrecht it becomes the Lek as it crosses the Amsterdam Rijn Canal. The Lek continues on and becomes the Niewe Maas as it goes through the Rotterdam Harbours to the Hoek of Holland and into the North Sea.
The Waal the stronger of the two continues on West and crosses the bottom of the Amsterdam Rijn Canal then on to Goringchem, here it changes to the Merwade and at Dordrecht it crosses the bottom of the Noord Canal and becomes the Oude Mass which comes into the Niewe Mass on the Rotterdam Harbour just before the Hoek of Holland.
ROTTERDAM
All of these rivers carry huge barges as they go to or from Rotterdam whose harbour stretches about 30 kilometres. Huge container ships, fuel boats and other cargo ships come into the harbours making Rotterdam the third busiest harbour in the World.
With some trepidation, on my part, Kevin loves it! we travelled up the Noord Canal to Rotterdam. The canal is very busy with barges and at the top we joined the Lek River which then turns into the Niewe Mass. At Rotterdam we stayed close to the side passing many side harbours and dodging barges coming out into the Niewe Maas like this one that popped out in front of us.
Through the Parksluis we went off up a smaller canal to meet Diana and Arthur at their club in Blijdorp. We stayed for a few days here then left with them to go further up the harbour to the Oude Maas and then through the lock into the Brielle Lake.
What an exciting cruise. The harbour is very wide and as we cruised about 12km up the harbour keeping to the side, huge boats passed us sometimes 3 abreast.We feel like an ant trying to keep out of the way of the feet at a football final.
Arthur’s boat in the next photo looks like a toy.
The Queen Mary was in the harbour and was giagantic, look at the barge next to her.
The old Rotterdam ship is berthed and is now used as a hotel.
The name of this boat was a bit of a shock as it came towards us.
A few more boats and we had to cross the harbour to the other side to go up the Oude Maas to the Brielle lock. We waited for these to go past then we went as fast as our little motors would go.
BRIELLE LAKE
The Brielle is a long narrow freshwater lake. The water is crystal clear but unfortunately it is too cold to swim yet. The white dots show our journey down the harbour and into the Brielle Lake .
There are many small side harbours for about 8 boats situated along the edge of the lake sheltered in behind trees. We stayed in one for a few days it was only about 2 k from the town of Brielle. While we were moored here we heard a woodpecker pecking away at a tree right alongside of our boats, what a noise he made.
Kevin fired up the BBQ while we were here and it cooked really well. BBQ
The town is one of the old fortified towns which still has the walls and maots surrounding it. We even found a Jumbo supermarket and had our free coffee after shopping.
MAASVLAKTE 2
Brielle is close to the harbour entrance so we caught a bus from Brielle to see the new reclamation project the Maasvlakte 2 which will increase the size of the port and allow in ships with a 20 metre draught.
Holland is the Master of finding new land. You can see by the photo below the area of North Sea that been reclaimed. The light orange is the first reclamation area and the dark orange the new area, both reclaimed from the North Sea.
Below are the photos showing the new land about 4 km from the old reclamation area out into the sea. The sand is sucked up by six trailing hoppers on huge ships from the sea floor 12 km out in the North Sea. The ships work 24 hrs a day, and once the hold is full they come in and pump the sand out to make the land fill. You may just be able to see the ship in the distance out on the sea wall.
January 2008
January 2010
Enough of giant sandcastles soon it was time to go back up the harbour and turn off towards Delft.
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