A Bridge Too Far - Oldemarkt

 

 

 

There are 6000 kms of navigable waterways in the Netherlands. A good number of the 16 million population owns a boat and many of those take to the water over the summer - not all at the same time fortunately. Not everyone has a car but nearly all have bikes and those who don't use the excellent rail, bus and ferry services. Something like 9 million vehicles on the move in a small country. So, lots of bridges.
Bridges come in all types. Lifting, swinging, floating, operated by bridge keepers remotely or manually, press a button, shout into a speaker, call up on VHF radio, call up or phone a keeper who half an hour later comes pedalling on his bike, pay a kid to do it for you and my very favourite- the bridge that magically detects you cruising up the canal and opens for you. Sometimes you're satisfyingly stopping a motorway and others you're swinging a mainline railway. Some bridges in Amsterdam only open for convoys between midnight and 2 am. I woke up one night and looked out of the window to watch a ghostly convoy of 20 boats swish past in the moonlight.
They're all different and you never know what you're going to be confronted with next. All bridges have operating hours and what I'd really like to know is why the automatic bridges need a lunch break between 1 and 2. Mostly you pass through with just a wave to the keeper but sometimes he/she will swing out a clog on a fishing line for a tip of 1 or 2 euro. The kids of course follow suit. And then there is the bridge to Oldemarkt, marked on the map as self opening.
Self opening usually means there will be an enterprising child looking to earn some holiday money. No child in evidence. We have learned to be observant over the past months - so why no child? Why are there lots of boats tied up this side of the bridge? Why are all the boats around here quite small?
So I jump off into the nettles, clamber up the bank, look at the instructions, all in double dutch and am told by a fisherman that there's no way I have the strength to open this lifting bridge and my husband needs to get off. Meanwhile another boat appears behind us. 'You open the bridge,' they shout, 'and we'll close it.' So Rob gets off and belatedly we realise that the winch is the opposite side of the canal to the boat and once the bridge is open we're on the wrong side. Nevertheless we wind up the winch, then Rob jumps on their boat and gets ferried to the other bank, jumps into the nettles, runs back up the canal, starts our boat casts off, steers through the bridge and moors and waits to pick up me. The growing crowd of cyclists - it's a footbridge - is beginning to grumble. The other boat,a family with at least 4 sulky teenage girls, keeping to their side of the bargain, puts off a rather elderly man - grandad I presume - to wind the bridge down.
So we are through. But the canal ends a couple of kilometres later. All the boats in the harbour at Oldemarkt are small enough to fit under the bridge without opening it. Tomorrow we'll have to come back...
The next day.
I know what to expect. 20 plus cyclists watch as I struggle with the winch.Why does no one offer to help? 'You'll go to heaven.'says one man encouragingly. Any moment now probably.
They all give me a round of applause as I finish and have a near heart attack.
 'You'll live forever I think,' says the man. That's more like it.