Entry 8 Sept 14 Learning to drive in narrow streets

David and Susan Bratt · Sat Jul 29, 2017 3:42 pm

The rain in Volendam stopped overnight, but it was drizzling again by morning and we abandoned the idea of riding our folding bikes into town; instead we drove Rover to a car park in the centrum.

: Driving into city centers can be dangerous; IMG_1849.jpg (72.04 KiB) Viewed 1791 times

Volendam is a tourist town. We walked past lots of shops along the harbor and bought bread, strawberries and peanuts in a street market. We see very few supermarkets: people still buy bread at the bakery and meat from the butcher. There is an amazing selection of fruits, fish, breads and beer available. We would like to find some Cheerios but are losing hope.

We then drove along the dike to Edam, know for its cheese. This time we stayed out of the center of town, parking in a car park near the Information bureau. Most of the car parks are clearly marked; some are free; some have a bar across the entrance that will not allow anything but little cars. Others are marked for buses, and we have used them without incident.

: Edam; IMG_1854.JPG (109.79 KiB) Viewed 1791 times

Edam is a lovely little place with tiny brick houses with tile roofs along many canals. There are flowers everywhere. It is unfortunate that they allow any cars to drive in the city center. One is always jumping out of the way of bikes and cars onto the two-foot wide sidewalks. There was a large camping store on the edge of town where we found out it would probably cost $1000 to equip Rover with a TV and a satellite dish, and then we would still have to purchase some service that was good only in a single country. Another problem that can wait for another day. But we are feeling a little left out of the news cycle. We get a 5-minute update from BBC on our short wave radio, which isn’t much; however, we’re finding that compressing the US presidential campaign to a single sentence isn’t a bad idea.

Our real adventure of the day was still ahead of us. We had a GPS location for a camperstop in the marina of the nearby town of Hoorn. But as we headed into the town center (always with fear and trepidation) we were confronted wth a detour and road construction just when we had the campground literally in sight. We had to leave the programmed route, at which the GPS lady began telling us to make U turns, first gently, then more insistently (or so it seemed). We finally shut her off, thereby losing the only map we had.

But we knew there had to be a way around, so we tried going around the city to come at it from the other side. Thank goodness for roundabouts: they get you back where you really want to be without turning around in traffic. We just didn’t know that we were heading directly into the tiny old city center. At one point we could see the harbor again and saw a sign for buses: surely a street that can handle buses can handle Rover, so we turned into it. David said, ”Finally, I don’t have anyone following us.” That was when I saw an elderly gentleman waving his arms and shaking his head in what was clearly the international language for “No!” We stopped. I hopped out. (I was to do a lot of hopping out today.) The gist of the elderly gentleman’s message was that “only buses can use this as a through street. There is an obstacle (a two-foot metal triangle) at the end, and only buses have the magic button to lower it out of their way.”

This one-lane street has houses lining one side with literally a two-foot sidewalk. The street itself was maybe 12 feet wide, and small cars were parked on the right, facing a canal. Mercifully, a few feet ahead we saw a break in the row of houses: a narrow alley. And directly opposite it was an empty parking space. David pulled into the parking space and backed up into the alley. Now this may sound easy, but by now there was a bus waiting, we were drawing a small crowd, and the backing up took several back and forths. But the narrow scrape on the top left side of Rover almost all washed off later, and the longsuffering bus driver had honked only once.

The nice man tried to give us directions, after which we did another couple of tight back and forths and headed back out of town. Three miles later, his directions had brought us right back to the end of that street, but this time on the other side of the obstacle. By this time I had reprogrammed the GPS lady, who was happy to give us correct directions to our destinations.

Correct, however, doesn’t mean easy: these were through even tighter streets where several people backed out of our way, and at least twice I got out of the motorhome to look around corners before we dared to drive around them. The problem is that the streets are so narrow that many have been designated one way now to accommodate the cars that didn’t exist when they were built. When we arrived at the harbor, we couldn’t believe the size of some of the other campers and motorhomes there. There had to be a better way out. We treated ourselves to a meal in a restaurant that night after biking around the city and scouting out the return map the harbor clerk had given us.

But on Sunday morning, leaving early before breakfast and traffic, we were sent to an even smaller street that we simply could not navigate. We deliberately went the wrong way on a one-way street to a bridge marked “2.3 m” wide and, with inches to spare, crossed it with a motorhome that measures 2.5 m. We were free of Hoorn and on our way.

Soon we were on a 20-mile motorway over a dike heading east. I counted 126 wind turbines in a line along the coast near Lelystad.

Now we are camped for nine days in a campground in St Nicolasga in the province of Friesland, where my brother and sister-in-law have rented a little vacation house. We will be joined by another sister and niece and brother-in-law, and together we will be visiting the birthplaces of our grandparents. It is nice not to be driving for a few days.

This is the first place where we have a water hookup at our site. There are many permanent trailers here, most of them closed up for the winter even though it’s only mid-September. Outside temperatures go down to 45 or so at night, but Rover’s LPG furnace takes the chill off quickly in the morning.