Sunday, 7th July, 2019
We had a very quiet night here, no wind to cause the water to slap as we had when we stopped at Mosselplaat earlier in the trip. During the night we had a few rain drops, which helped clear the light dust off the deck. There was no great need to leave early as Middelburg is not far. Haringvreter is larger than Mosselplaat and has its own herd of fallow deer. Chris was chatting to a Dutchman who visits frequently and was told that the herd is normally 40 deer but in the spring and summer increases with the newborns.
We slipped our lines at about midday and headed for the lock at Vera, where we joined three other boats. After a short lock-in we were off to Middelburg. We arrived at the Harbourmaster’s pontoon to sort out our berth for the night and were allocated Box 12. Carole sorted out the lines and rolled up the fenders on deck. Chris made a few attempts to get lined up to go stern in. All was going well, but as before the box was a bit tight. Our widest point is 3.87 metres and we had been assured that this box was 4 metres, so we should have had a little bit of leeway. Carole wondered who had done the measurements and had their tape measure shrunk! Anyway, with a big blast of power we got in ok and tied up. As we have mentioned before, Middelburg have good shops for food so our task was to top up our cupboards for the return trip home. The major issue was that we were very low on tea bags and the closest tasting tea bags to ours are Liptons English Breakfast.
We (Chris) decided to eat out at the WV Arne Clubhouse restaurant and bar. We both chose Surf and Turf. This was a great choice with large prawns and a small fillet steak with chips and vegetables cooked perfectly. Best meal out of the trip!
Once back on the boat, we looked at the weather forecast to make our plans for our return home. The wind was presently NW changing to SW on Wednesday. We made our plans to leave Middelburg and Vlissingen and take the tide to Ostend on Tuesday and then leave Ostend early on Wednesday morning to make the crossing to Harwich and on to Ipswich by early evening. We headed to our beds looking forward to going home.