While I was passing through Limburg it started to rain so I decided not to stop driving until it was dry. I got to a T junction, turn left and in a couple of minutes you enter Germany, turn right and you enter Belgium. I remembered vaguely being in this region away back as a teenager with my European Interrail pass and had visited Aachen (D) and the Ruhr Valley so decided to turn right.

The first stop in Belgium was for petrol (ALOT cheaper than Holland) and some coffee. I was speaking in Dutch but couldn’t understand a word the Belgians were saying in their dialect. I decided to keep driving, the landscape changed into miles and miles of Belgian villages, all brickwork and delapidation. Have you ever been in Belgium? It borders of depressing even on the sunniest of days but i’ve learned to look at Belgium in comparison to slick-and-modern over-regimented Holland and can see the charm in the brick houses and road directions, some of them downright dangerous.

I decided to give up on my no-stopping rule, due to starvation and was in the area of Brussels. Look on a map and you’ll see I crossed (almost) the whole country – in an hour! I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been to Brussels so opted very randomly for Mechelen, slightly in the direction of Antwerp.

First thoughts on Mechelen….pretty, slightly ghetto, delapidated, ghost town (but this was due to the storm I think). Places that don’t have modern high-rise suburbs are a major plus for me and Mechelen didn’t have any. It wasn’t as beautiful as Bruges and lacked the sophistication of Brussels but it was way better than tense Antwerp.

Rainy saturday in Mechelen.

I went to a cafe, ate and drank coffee for ages while looking onto a deserted square waiting for the rain to stop. The people of Mechelen are nicknamed the “Moon Extinguishers” by the people of Belgium. One night in the 17th Century the moon was reflected in the windows of the tower of the church (in the photo above). The people of Mechelen started to climb the tower with buckets of water to save their precious church from what they thought was a fire and hence the nickname. The deeper you delve into what it means to be Belgian the more you will discover odd stories like this.

So, my Saturday in Mechelen, by now horizontal rain and discarded bits of metal and fabric that used to be umbrellas. I took a few photos of some buildings:

The offices of Vlaams Belang, the political party which wants the northern Dutch speaking part of Belgium to seperate from the French speaking south (Wallonie).

By now it was bordering on gale force so I decided to seek shelter in the church but to no avail – it was closed.  I stood in a doorway of the church until the worst of the rain was over. Nearby was a couple of statues which I thought worthy of a photo before the drive back home.

  Jesus had a strange glow.

The scary drive back home

I remember last year while driving to Meppel I noticed a small village built on top of what seemed like a small hill surrounded by fields. I was immediately drawn to this village and attracted to the hamlet kind of feel it had and it’s simple architecture. I managed to find some information on this village, it in fact used to be an island. The inhabitants of this island, it’s name Schokland, were evacuated on the orders of King Willem III in 1859 after some parts of the island had vanished into the sea after major storms (see the painting above). I was intruiged by this story and attracted to the idea of abandoned islands, the moment of the evacuation suspended in time.

Today I managed to return to Schokland to see it for myself. Here are some photos I took:

The simple church surrounded by small wooden houses. This was the main Protestant part of the island and largest settlement, further to the north was the Catholic enclave called Emmeloord although no houses remain there. The interior of the church is quite beautiful, the simpleness of the island folk seems to be reflected in the simpleness of the interior:

The village is very compact, infact blink and you will miss the whole place. Even although the village is surrounded by mile upon mile of farmland you can still sense that this all used to be the sea:

The sea wall where boats would moor.

The cannon would alert the islanders of tidal surges.

The lighthouse and harbour wall, now in the middle of farmland.

The dyke protecting the village.

The islanders up until the evacuation had left an isolated existance speaking a Dutch dialect called Schokker. After the evacuation most resettled in the nearby village of Vollehoeve which was on the mainland. A small statue commemorating the evacuation:

In 1944 the Dutch government started a program to reclaim the land surrounding the island of Schokland and the area was renamed the Noordoostpolder. At the time of the evacuation the population of Schokland was 650, today it is 5.

Urk is one of the smallest districts of The Netherlands although this little harbour town and former island has the largest fishing fleet in the whole country. One of the oldest and most distinctive dialects of Dutch is the language which is spoken in Urk. Currently, Urk is no longer an island, and exposure to the standard Dutch through the media is widespread. However, the distinctive Urkish dialect is still alive.

This little religious town which is extremely closed in on itself socially reminded me alot of Volendam on the other side of the Ijsselmeer Lake. Although Volendam gives the impression of being full of french-fry-eating drunks Urk on the other hand seems very hard working and upright due to the amount of fishing trawlers in it’s harbour.

Ransdorp is a beautiful little village just north of Amsterdam and very much off the tourist trail. Most tourists head for the villages of Edam and Volendam. I personally think that Volendam is an unattractive sort of place – slightly rough with an industrial area right at the harbour – and Edam seems to lack charm, it’s just been spruced up for the tourist industry. If you want to see a real Dutch village then take my advice and go to Ransdorp, Holysloot and Marken.

Avoid the tourist coaches, just take the normal Amsterdam city bus, you can even hire a bike and cycle to Ransdorp in 15 mins from the main city train station. Stop off at the little cafe in Ransdorp for some apple pie and delicious Dutch coffee, it is a very “authentic” sort of place, climb to the top of the church (summer months) for a view as far as Hilversum and the dunes that protect the Netherlands from the North Sea.

Then cycle 4km to the following village of Holysloot where you can stop off again for more coffee and cake. If you pass the white church you’ll come to a dead end where you can hire boats – the owner is called John, just ask for him. If you want a boat with an engine (65 euro a day) then take some I.D. – otherwise there are rowing boats and Canadian canoes for about 20 euro. You can go by boat to the island in the lake called Uitdammer Die – nearby is the village of Uitdam, no cafe but there are chairs and tables in someone’s garden where they serve coffee and snacks. You can also go by boat to other villages and as far as the town of Monnickendam.

All of the villages are connected by bike routes and in true Dutch fashion are over-signposted to saturation point.

For the past hundred years the Scottish census of 1911 has been under lock and key, that was until this week Tuesday. Now you can see where your ancestors lived in 1911 and where they were employed. If you don’t trust the net to pay for things by C.C. when purchasing Credits – don’t worry here’s how to get the 1911 …FOR FREE:

Go to http://www.ancestralscotland.com/newsletter and register for the newsletter.

Once done you will have received a voucher in your email inbox. This voucher gives you 10 credits.

Copy the voucher code and go to the official Census website: http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk where you register.

Now paste the voucher number where is says ‘Need more Credits’ and now you can view the Census extract for free!