As per last night’s plan we are up and ready to leave before 10:30. As we leave Middelburg it turns grey with showers and rain. The A57 road crossesflat grasland before starting across long barrages. We are driving only a few metres above the sea, with long rows of sluice operation gear flashing by on our left. For twenty odd miles we are either on these dykes or spits of land with dunes and shellfish farms.
The industrial mass of Rotterdam looms ahead and we drive on motorway between refineries, cranes, tank farms and car storage pounds, as well as submerging through a couple of tunnels and winding around a huge multi-level intersection that makes spaghetti junction look like a paperclip. But the good news is that the sun comes out as we near the end of our journey.
Soon we arrive in Schiedam and find the motorhome parking on the edge of a canal in the shadow of one of the Country’s tallest windmills. The bays are only 6m long which requires us to drive nose in, unload buggy and motorbike then reverse in slightly overhanging the edge.
We set off into town, passing a row of terapins basking on a log in the canal. Alongside another canal we see old working boats and then cross a couple of skinny bridges from which we can see other windmills.
Schiedam is most famous for making Jenever, a spirit drink similar to gin and we have come to see the Schiedam Jenever Musem which is located in a former distillery. The receptionist tells us a few facts and says that today is a meeting day for friends/ambassadors of the museum, where an annual competition to design a lable will be judged and the Mayor will receive the first bottle of this year’s produce.
Over three creaky wooden floors we visit the library; the bottle collection containing hundreds of bottles, miniatures and glasses from hundreds of manufacturers; the labelling exhibit with collections of themed labels, animals, birds, flora and people; an area of tools, model stills and machinery; and finally the current distillery, a small scale set up run by volunteers.
English speaking guide, Peter, explains how rye and barley are ground and soaked in the mash tun. Yeast is added then the liquid is passed through the still three times, raising the alcahol content from 5% to 40% which produces malt wine similar to a whisky. To become Jenever, Juniper berries are added turning the malt wine into a drink more like gin. Special versions can be made by flavouring with fruit berries or herbs. The casks come from America after single uses for bourbon. After being used twice for Jenever they are moved onto the Scottish whisky industry.
We finish our tour with a tasting session, a glass of each of the three stages and all of us agree the Jenever is our favourite. Malt wine is as nice as many whiskys and the one with red fruit tastes something like aquavit, but Jenever makes the best single drink or aparetif.
Just down the canal from the museum we see tables and chairs and people eating outside the Italia restaurant Prego. We sit in warm sunshine enjoying a selection of antipasti.
Fed and rested we continue the loop-around route along the canal pasing four more huge windmills, one with sails turning, one 33 metres tall, and through two squares where in one live sax jazz is playing and in another a group doing Coldplay.
Back at the vans we have a quiet and restful evening.