Flat bottomed girl Views from the canal VALERIE POORE takes the helm of our regular barge boat column.
WINTER ON A BARGE It’s often strange for me sitting here in the northern hemisphere to read the stories and articles from all the Australian contributors to SisterShip Magazine. As I write, they’re all dealing with the challenges of summer, and this year what challenges they’ve had: bushfires, searing temperatures, drought and intensely difficult situations. My thoughts have often been with SisterShip’s Jackie Parry who’s been on constant alert to save her home from the encroaching fires, although it seems the longed-for rain has now relieved them. Meanwhile, we in northern Europe have had little to complain about; it’s just that for us it’s winter and winter in the Netherlands isn’t much to get excited about unless you count the occasional wild winds from the west. We’ve recently had three of these, two of which warranted the names of Ciara and Denis. These unwelcome visitors meant the city had to close the flood gates due to the exceptionally high water caused by the spring tides and heavy rain. Mostly in winter, strong east winds result in extremely low water.
However, here in Rotterdam we rarely have snow. In fact, in the last few years, snow has only graced us with its presence briefly and quite late in the season. Last winter, I think it was the end of February or even March before we had our smattering, but even then it only lasted a few days. Quite disappointing for those desperate to don their skates and travel the canals on foot rather than by boat. Being a maritime climate, of course, we don’t expect to have hard winters in the west of the country; in the east it’s much colder, but also dryer. So you might think that coping with winter on a barge in Rotterdam isn’t too bad. No, it isn’t, not if we compare it to Siberia, or even the central USA. Alright, maybe that’s exaggerating the contrasts too much, but we have certain challenges ourselves for all that, added to which I categorically do not do cold. To explain, old Dutch barges are steel, and even older Dutch barges are iron. Mine was built in 1898 and is 122 years old this year; it was constructed from 6 mm iron plates shaped and riveted to curved ribs. The upper part of my barge (I can’t call it a SisterShip 32
