Back home

East, West, and all that.

Kerke den sint Nicklaas, Helvoirt*

‘Twas a beautiful funeral in a beautiful church. Dutch churches are very large.  This one, in a small village seemed big enough to hold a good two or three hundred people which was good because there were at least that many people there. A much loved man, Jacques. (The only problem for us was that we didn’t understand a word of the service or the various readings and eulogies : (

There were too many flowers to fit on the coffin so as people left their seats to go out to the graveyard, they were handed flowers to carry.  And then formed a kind of flowery guard of honour for the coffin.

And his widow was happy to see us and two of my sisters came as well and a niece so it was all very much worth the effort.

Holland is beautiful on a sunny evening or on a misty morning.

But I was severely curtailed in the photo department.  As Barney prefers to drive himself he drove all the way there and back and all the time when we were finding the church, looking for places to eat and places to buy flowers and it seemed a bit demanding to say “STOP” (every five minutes) “I have to take a photo (or twenty)”.

I did, however, get up at six, on the morning of the funeral, and zoomed up the road to investigate a lake we’d passed the night before.

Lake at Cromvoirt

Sunrise at Cromvoirt

And there was a windmill which Barney agreed ought to be photographed

Windmill at Nieuwkuijk

And there was the ferry of course : )

ship ahoy!

odd things you see on ships

A veritable playground for me 🙂

Playground?

And encounters with other photographers.  I’ve noticed in the last year or two, how people carrying large cameras tend to catch each others’ eyes at photgraphically inviting places, after first glancing down at the other camera to see what sort they’ve got.  It’s like belonging to a large club : )

And here’s our hotel

De Kruishoeve

Oof!  It’s all been a long way.

Happy to have been, happy to be back, see you all later : )

I’m still trying to work out why the pictures come up a bit blurry on wordpress.  The big versions seem to be ok though.  So if you don’t mind waiting for them, you should get a reasonable picture!

*I may have got my dutch prepositions wrong here – perhaps it’s von or van rather than den?