29th May 2016. Zwolle, The Netherlands.

We were quite pleased to leave the hustle and bustle of Venlo and made our way to Zwolle in Holland.

We discovered yet again that we really can’t trust the SAT NAV when it tried to stuff us up yet again!

We had found a small marina to stay at, Marina de Hanze in Zwolle, however as we got close to it our SAT NAV turned us off the road we were travelling on and directed us down an access road to some flats.  Its next genius idea was to send up a narrow lane, which didn’t concern us too much, until the ‘lane’ turned out to actually be a tarmac’d footpath!  We only realised that when we’d driven a few metres and it connected with what was unmistakably at tiny footpath which our lovely SAT NAV then suggested we turn left into (we could see into the marina from our vantage point!).

Luckily there was no one around to witness our embarrassing mistake and Darren adeptly reversed all the way back down the footpath and on to the access road.  T he SAT NAV’s new instructions were to follow the access road round past the other side of the flats and back on to the road we had turned off five minutes beforehand.  Apparently we should have ignored the initial instructions and just continued straight ahead so she could smugly say ‘ you have reached your destination’, but where’s the fun in that!

So another lesson learned, when getting near the destination look for signs and take what the SAT NAV says with ‘a pinch of salt’.

Marina de Hanza was a very good find.  There was only one other motorhome at the site on the day we arrived, that left the next day and we were on our own for the next couple of days.  It was lovely and peaceful.  We were a path width away from the harbour and behind that and to the side of us were the canal.

I was very excited when the harbour master told us that the bank opposite was actually a dyke, I’ve wanted to see one of those since I was a child after hearing the tale of the little boy saving the village when he found a hole in the dyke.

We had a nice walk at dusk although it was raining lightly, it smelled so lovely and as we walked along the dyke a heron flew past.  We walked round the marina after we walked back to the site and the heron flew up beside us on the other side of the harbour wall.

 

 

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