Where's Bertie? He's in the motorhome area of a car park in the town of Zaltbommel (exact location: 51.81074, 8.24006).
The Dutch Waterline Museum was the main feature of today, and we were in the car park of Fort Bij Vechtan, where it is located, before it opened this morning. An early elevenses (at 9.30!) later and we made our way across a bridge, through a slot in the external wall of the fort...
...and parted with €7.50 a head (plus €3 for the car park) to go into the museum.
It's not a particularly big museum, but it's another one, like the Visitor Centre at Jelling in Norway, that uses modern technology well in its interactive exhibits.
On entering, each visitor gets given a wrist band with an electronic chip and in the first room one answers a ringing telephone (of a traditional style), and, having 'dibbed' the chip against the reader, chooses a language. All exhibits then play in that language.
Mick knew nothing about the museum before we arrived and from my desciption of 'it's about the Dutch water defences' he thought it was about flood defences ... which it is, in an obscure sort of way. What it actually tells is the history of the way the Dutch used water to defend the west of the country from attack from the 1600s right up until the mid 1900s. This was done by a set of dykes and sluice gates, by means of which it was possible to flood a corridor which spanned the length of the country. By flooding that area (something made possible by the fact that a quarter of the Netherlands is below sea level and another quarter is flood plain) to a depth of between 50 and 60cm, the water was too deep to wade through at the necessary speed for an attack, but too shallow for boats. Combined with building forts on all raises in the ground along that line, it apparently made a very effective defence and held off attacks by the French in 1792. Of course, by the Second World War it was pretty well obsolete, as the Germans simply flew over it, although having occupied the west of the Netherlands they did then briefly put it to use themselves.
Unfortunately out of order today, a scale model of the waterline defence has been constructed in the courtyard of the museum.
I didn't get a snap of the main highlight (because we were both on it at the same time and we had the place to ourselves so couldn't snap anyone else), which was a virtual reality parachute jump giving a view over the defence and seeing it being flooded.
Other fun bits were the 'where would you place your forts and how much water would you use' game...
We learnt from the 'practice run' disaster and got it right the second time around
...and the room where five characters (including the chap who designed the defence, a farmer's wife whose land was flooded, and her husband who was called up to build the fort) told the story of the defence from their point of view:
The faces were projected onto figures built out of horizontal layers of felt, presumably an environmentally friendly recycled material.
We exhausted the exhibits within an hour and a half, but having gone in with no knowledge about the waterline, it was a fun and educational visit. We topped it off with a stroll around the fort grounds, pausing on our way to watch the activities of a very large group (of college age) who were on a team building day. I don't think I've ever been on a team building day that I enjoyed, but this looked like fun!
A marina in Cumelborg was where we intended to stay the night, about half an hour down the road from Bunnik (where the museum is located - that's just outside of Utrecht). We arrived via a Lidl, approached via an 'interesting' tour of narrow, block-paved residential streets (thanks to the SatNav that then wanted us to nip through a pedestrian walkway). Alas, having made the slow detour across town, along more narrow streets where bicycles rule, we found there to be no room at the inn. That was a blow. Aside from it looking like a nice place, the reason we had gone there was so I could do some laundry (yes, we are home in 6 days, but some things are desperately in need of a clean). I gave passing thought to asking if we could just use their laundry facilities for an hour, but decided that our priority should probably be to find somewhere to stay if everywhere was going to be so busy over the weekend.
Another half an hour down the road brought us Zaltbommel, where there was plenty of room available for us, probably because there's nothing to recommend the car park itself, even if the town is nice. For the entire time I've been typing this the location has gone down further in our estimation, as a cluster of cars, a bong and some Bollywood tunes (played at volume) have all appeared. Fingers are crossed that they don't intend to hang around past dark...
When I was in a Lidl yesterday the woman in front of me in the queue bought a few of these and I wondered what they were, so I bought one today (and as a further indication of their popularity the woman in front of us in the queue today had some too). I'm still not sure what they are, but it was tasty!
The Dutch Waterline Museum was the main feature of today, and we were in the car park of Fort Bij Vechtan, where it is located, before it opened this morning. An early elevenses (at 9.30!) later and we made our way across a bridge, through a slot in the external wall of the fort...
...and parted with €7.50 a head (plus €3 for the car park) to go into the museum.
It's not a particularly big museum, but it's another one, like the Visitor Centre at Jelling in Norway, that uses modern technology well in its interactive exhibits.
On entering, each visitor gets given a wrist band with an electronic chip and in the first room one answers a ringing telephone (of a traditional style), and, having 'dibbed' the chip against the reader, chooses a language. All exhibits then play in that language.
Mick knew nothing about the museum before we arrived and from my desciption of 'it's about the Dutch water defences' he thought it was about flood defences ... which it is, in an obscure sort of way. What it actually tells is the history of the way the Dutch used water to defend the west of the country from attack from the 1600s right up until the mid 1900s. This was done by a set of dykes and sluice gates, by means of which it was possible to flood a corridor which spanned the length of the country. By flooding that area (something made possible by the fact that a quarter of the Netherlands is below sea level and another quarter is flood plain) to a depth of between 50 and 60cm, the water was too deep to wade through at the necessary speed for an attack, but too shallow for boats. Combined with building forts on all raises in the ground along that line, it apparently made a very effective defence and held off attacks by the French in 1792. Of course, by the Second World War it was pretty well obsolete, as the Germans simply flew over it, although having occupied the west of the Netherlands they did then briefly put it to use themselves.
Unfortunately out of order today, a scale model of the waterline defence has been constructed in the courtyard of the museum.
I didn't get a snap of the main highlight (because we were both on it at the same time and we had the place to ourselves so couldn't snap anyone else), which was a virtual reality parachute jump giving a view over the defence and seeing it being flooded.
Other fun bits were the 'where would you place your forts and how much water would you use' game...
We learnt from the 'practice run' disaster and got it right the second time around
...and the room where five characters (including the chap who designed the defence, a farmer's wife whose land was flooded, and her husband who was called up to build the fort) told the story of the defence from their point of view:
The faces were projected onto figures built out of horizontal layers of felt, presumably an environmentally friendly recycled material.
We exhausted the exhibits within an hour and a half, but having gone in with no knowledge about the waterline, it was a fun and educational visit. We topped it off with a stroll around the fort grounds, pausing on our way to watch the activities of a very large group (of college age) who were on a team building day. I don't think I've ever been on a team building day that I enjoyed, but this looked like fun!
A marina in Cumelborg was where we intended to stay the night, about half an hour down the road from Bunnik (where the museum is located - that's just outside of Utrecht). We arrived via a Lidl, approached via an 'interesting' tour of narrow, block-paved residential streets (thanks to the SatNav that then wanted us to nip through a pedestrian walkway). Alas, having made the slow detour across town, along more narrow streets where bicycles rule, we found there to be no room at the inn. That was a blow. Aside from it looking like a nice place, the reason we had gone there was so I could do some laundry (yes, we are home in 6 days, but some things are desperately in need of a clean). I gave passing thought to asking if we could just use their laundry facilities for an hour, but decided that our priority should probably be to find somewhere to stay if everywhere was going to be so busy over the weekend.
Another half an hour down the road brought us Zaltbommel, where there was plenty of room available for us, probably because there's nothing to recommend the car park itself, even if the town is nice. For the entire time I've been typing this the location has gone down further in our estimation, as a cluster of cars, a bong and some Bollywood tunes (played at volume) have all appeared. Fingers are crossed that they don't intend to hang around past dark...
When I was in a Lidl yesterday the woman in front of me in the queue bought a few of these and I wondered what they were, so I bought one today (and as a further indication of their popularity the woman in front of us in the queue today had some too). I'm still not sure what they are, but it was tasty!
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