Thursday 20 December

Welcome back to the Shell Gallery, where I shall be blogging during my current stay in the Netherlands. I am staying with my father in a small village a few miles outside the city of Arnhem, which (in turn) is located 65 miles east of Amsterdam and 15 miles west of the German border.

I left Stornoway by plane at 11 am, and had precious few views along the way. A brief glance of the town before we went up into the cloud, and a glance of Loch Ness on descent into Dalcross airport, east of Inverness. 



After a very quick turn-around, I boarded the Amsterdam flight, now operated by a jet aircraft, rather than a turboprop which was on service last September. Again, hardly any views along the way, and when the plane touched down in Amsterdam it was raining, and visibility quite poor. The 3.15pm train took me to Utrecht, where I changed into the 3.53pm intercity service to Arnhem, which I reached at 4.30pm. 25 minutes later, the bus took me the remaining miles to my dad's place.

Wednesday 3 October

A very wet day at times here, with good spells of rain. Not too cold, around 15C, which is pretty good for early October here. Spent most of the day updating this blog and getting ready for my return to Stornoway tomorrow. This will mean that the Shell Gallery will go back under wraps until my next visit to the Netherlands. Went for a walk to the graveyard to lay flowers on my mother's grave. Did take a few snaps on the way there, which I'll post to close this entry - and (for now) updates on this blog. I'll resume blogging on Atlantic Lines on Friday.

Tuesday 2 October

Went to the west of the country to attend to my sister's birthday. She was a certain age, and did not really want to know about it. Well, everybody was made to know about it. I won't post those pics on a public blog, but everybody that was there (and a few others) knows exactly what I'm talking about. I will share a few pics of the pets of the household. My dad and I were very generously treated to a dinner at a tapas restaurant in their town; after three helpings, I was quite replete. Returned to base at 10.30pm, after a train journey that went as smoothly as the one going there.

Oh, did I mention the big tits that were looking for a nestbox? Well, they did here.

Monday 1 October

A beautiful autumn day here in the east of Holland; the west had to make do with cloud and later rain. We managed 18C / 64F. Went on a long walk, over to the town of Dieren, some 6 miles by rail and road; but our walk took nearly 10 miles. We went up to the Zypenberg and Posbank, a mile or so north Rheden, then through the Onzalige Bossen [Unholy Woods] to the Carolinahoeve, thence the final 3 miles to Dieren. The Carolinahoeve, an old farmhouse converted to a restaurant, was closed for the Monday. Otherwise, there were not many other walkers or cyclists around. It took us four hours to cover the distance. After a cuppa and a piece of apple pie at a relative's house we went home by train - which left us with just over a mile to walk back.

Again, I'll post piccies at a later stage, as I'm very behind with uploading photos. A selection will appear on my Facebook page.

Picture post - 1 October

Project X comes to Holland

I am ten days late commenting on this event, but Project X visited Haren, Netherlands, on September 20th. A kid put her Sweet Sixteen party on Facebook, but forgot to make it private. So, 1500 hooligans turned up in the town, burned cars, looted shops and fought pitched, running battles with police - in spite of the fact that it had been amply announced that there was no party. The hooligans (rent-a-mob variety) had come up from all over the country, and it says enough when I tell you that Haren is about 130 miles northeast of Amsterdam.

Blame Facebook? I'd say they had some part to play, with their blasted privacy settings. For events, they should be private (user-only) by default, with users having to actively select who to invite, or to actively make it public. However, there is never any excuse for wanton destruction and violence.

More factual information on this Channel 4 output.



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Weekend 29 / 30 September

Well, here I am, back on the Shell Gallery, and you'll be getting a series of posts completely out of chronological sequence. As I type this, I still have not uploaded all 1,050 pictures I took during my holiday in Vlieland, but if you are one of my Facebook contacts, you will have gotten a good sample by now.

Today (Sunday) was a nice and sunny day in eastern Holland, and we went out for an hour's stroll, 3 miles, in the woods around the village. The streets were very busy with walkers, unusually so. The local agricultural college has organised a series of walks, varying in length from 9 to 50 miles (indeed, 50 miles). Wherever we went in the forest, we came across throngs of people, all on those walks. Not used to it.

Yesterday, Saturday 29th, I took the bus to the town of Rhenen, 16 miles west of here, to visit relatives that I had not visited there before. I had previously seen them last December. The journey took 90 minutes and involved three buses. The Dutch public transport system has a chipcard that gets charged for each journey you make, but you do have to remember to check in and out at the start and end of each leg of the journey. I enjoyed the trip, as Saturday too was sunny. I took the GPS along, and this showed a different trace for the outward journey on the road from Wageningen to Rhenen, than for the return trip - even though it was the same road. The problem occurred as a result of heavy woodlands on the Grebbeberg.

Tomorrow, Monday, I shall once again be busy most of the day, so I don't think I'll get down to much uploading of pics, or updating this blog regarding my Vlieland trip. However, I have it all written up in the word processor, so it's a question of copy & paste in a matter of minutes.