HOLIDAY PART 3

I was nagged by Teresa this morning because I hadn't done another blog about my holiday so I thought I'd better put other things aside and Get On With It!!
For ten weeks in the summer the townsfolk of Schagen who belong to a Folk Lore society, dress up in local Dutch costume, get prams, carriages and other items from the local museum and parade through the streets on what we thought was a set route.

 These people are watching in the direction from which the parade will appear.

And these people were canny enough to get there early and bag places in a local restaurant...

 

There wasn't much chance to get framed photos as there wasn't much room to see them before they'd gone past. These are just a flavour of the procession. Here's the baker,

and the local band, being driven by a lady (minus her horse!) followed by colourful clowns.

The baby's in an up to date push chair and the man behind on his bike has chickens in the wicker basket. Unfortunately he's missing the basket on the back! I missed that...

It's not just women and children but men take part, too, in appropriate dark clothes.

Young girls on a wagon which we saw some days later in the museum.

I wonder if these children in their clogs represented a class of schoolchildren with their teacher -

Lots of nice horses pulling the various wagons, very well behaved,

and you know what they say, 'After the Lord Mayor's coach comes the dung cart', well, here he is!

This man is the 'clearer-upper' after the horses have passed.

Just a few of the many scenes of the procession which I took on that sunny Thursday.

I can't imagine people in my village dressing up and parading through the streets, even if it was allowed. No doubt 'elf and Safety would intervene...and the Police...

Later, as we were wandering among the stalls lining each side of the narrow road, we found the procession's route had changed and everything, including the leading police horses, was following us. We all crammed ourselves as close to the stalls as we could until they'd passed. I'm not that fond of horses so close - Teresa said the mounted policeman's boot just missed my head, we were that close. The photos I took were mainly of the backs of people and horses' bottoms...

 

The next day we all went to Zaanse Schans as Jonathan took a day's holiday. I had been here back in the 1970s but it has been much enlarged and is more of a tourist attraction now. Plenty of old windmills, not just for grinding corn but an oil mill, paint mill,  a saw mill for cutting lumber, dye grinding mill and a spice mill. There were old houses, traditional shops,and a trip round De Zaan in a tourist boat to see the mills from the water. 

The houses were traditional buildings moved from elsewhere and now used as shops - painted in what seems to be a traditional green, at least round here.

 

 This finial is on one shop and shows a beehive, below is another pretty finial.

These houses line the Zaan's banks, mixed in with warehouses from the early part of the 20th century when Holland imported goods from its East India colonies.

 

Here's one of the factories/warehouses - if you have a knowledge of some German you can guess that this says 'eagle' and. checking on Google, it does. It's not really at this angle, the boat had already passed it!

 

 

The boat passed all the mills though I don't know which one this was. Jonathan wasn't very impressed with the 'captain's' English translation of what he was saying in Dutch, saying that it wasn't accurate.

 

It must have been hot that day, I have a T shirt on!

 

Teresa and Jonathan went into (and up) the oil mill while I sat outside in the shade and while I was there I took a photo of this happy child, sitting with her father. She didn't smile at all!

 

I meant to call it A Happy Dutch Child! Mum returned and Dad went off so I called the Mum and showed her the picture - they were Austrian!

 

This clog shop had plenty of visitors - footwear in all sizes, colours and designs from children just about walking to adults. Plenty more at the other end of the shop, too. A demonstration was going on but I couldn't see it, I was too low down.  Then home.

.......

 

This is something I missed off the Het Loo trip - would you like to walk on this pavement?

 

In reality it is perfectly flat, just an ordinary path but cleverly designed to make you think it's all 'humps and bumps'. But quite eyecatching, to say the least...