An extra day's holiday in Breille

We wake at eight to a bright sunny morning, I shower and dress first and then make my way to the dining room for breakfast, Irene and David follow in about half an hour. The breakfast offering is almost identical with the hotel Kral in Erlangen, a choice of either cooked English or Continental breakfast. I opt for the latter, with rye bread and black coffee. After breakfast we arrange with the receptionist to leave David's car in the car park until it is time to leave for the ferry this afternoon, after first stowing our overnight bags in the boot, before exploring Breille on foot. It is bigger than we had thought, with a series of streets linking one quay with another, about two to three hundred yards apart, and cross streets making a kind of grid, but not in a geometric pattern. Dominating the town is the 13th century ,church of St Catherine, often called Breille Cathedral. It was from this church that Queen Mary Stuart, waved goodbye to her husband, William of Orange, as he set sail with his fleet to assume the crown of England in 1688, an event in English history known as the Glorious Revolution, but was in fact a Protestant Coup D'Etat. The church stands within a small church yard, its tower rising up almost 200 ft, it was from the top of this tower that Queen Mary waved to William. The church is open and a guide is sat at a desk inside the door, immediately I am reminded of my friend Leslie, who died in March and performed a similar function at Beverley Minster. He passes us a guide sheet in English and tells us, that for an extra euro, we can climb the tower. It seems a good way of checking the layout of the town, so we pay up gladly. In an alcove is a multimedia screen with a history of the church in several languages, including English, so we watch this first, before climbing the circular staircase of the tower. From the first landing we have a good aerial view of the church's interior and we can clearly see where the altar stood before the reformation. The building itself gives off a kind of sad emptiness, the modern era not being much prone to church worship. We resume our climb of the stairway, passing the belfry, just as the bells chime the hour and then after a further short ascent emerge into the brilliant sunshine of the roof terrace. It is Spring Bank Holiday in England, but an ordinary Monday in Holland. To our North we can make out the sprawl of Europort and to the east Rotterdam, to our west lies the sea and to the south the old Dutch Naval fortress of Helvetsluis, now converted into holiday appartments restaurants and commuter accomodation for the city. Last year, I had lunch at a restaurant on the sea front with my sister Jackie and family, before catching the ferry home. Having thoroughly orientated ourselves to the lay out of the town, we descend the stairs again and then walk down the street past the Hotel Zalm, to the southern quay and walk to a bench at its eastern end, where we sit in the warm sunshine for a while looking at the yachts and houseboats in the water. Alongside the quay are quaint Dutch houses, much narrower than those in England or Germany, as land is at such a premium in Holland, a large part of it having been wrested from the North Sea. We resume our walk, eventually crossing over a footbridge and stopping for coffee and Dutch apple pie at a pub on the corner. We sit outside and are served by a waitress, who looks to be from Surinam, half the population of Rotterdam are non indigenous. The apple pie certainly is and confirms my impression of its superiority over its Germanic cousin, the strudel. Irene needs the loo, so I accompany her indoors and locate the ladies, needing the gents myself. There are three or four regulars at the bar, all smoking, and the place is thick with their fumes. It must be permissible to smoke in bars in Holland, but not in restaurants, as we see several bars with smokers inside during the course of the day. Over coffee, David and I discuss the feasibility of getting to see the Championship play off final between Watford and Crystal Palace. The winner secures promotion to the premier league and it said to be worth over £50m. It kicks off at 3PM at Wembley, 4PM here. One option is to board the Ferry early and catch the second half in the lounge on board, the other is to watch the match in a pub here and board later. David says he will phone later and find out how early we can load the car. We wander round the western perimeter of the town, which is a raised levee and has been designated a dog walking area, an old black cannon sits not far from a windmill, a sign says locally milled flour can be bought on Mondays. When we arrive at the Northern quay a thriving market is in progress, and the first stall is selling lumpea, a favourite Dutch snack, actually a spring roll, so I buy three for us to eat. Irene and David had never had one before, but like the experience. A pub opposite has a sky television, but is also full of smoke and some quite dodgy looking characters. The market and the sunshine has brought lots of people to town, and we browse around the stalls happily for an hour, tempted most by those selling cheeses. The bland Edam and Gouda cheese sold in English supermarkets, doesn't begin to do justice to the full range on offer here and in most Dutch supermarkets. By now it is after one o'clock and really quite hot, the sun shining from a cloudless sky, so we decide against buying cheese and storing it in David's car. We continue our exploration and stop to buy some pretty oil cloth from a hardware store, to go on Irene's garden table at home. Unfortunately there is only about half a metre left when it comes to my turn, so I ask if they have any in a blue and white delft pattern. They don't, so I decide to see if other shops have any, they don't either, but I find a red and white check washable table cover in a supermarket on offer and buy that for half the price of the hardware store. Next door is a pub, which has no smoking and a big screen TV, the landlady says she will put the match on for us and to bring all our English friends, but it is only three o'clock, so we return to the square first and order a beer from the restaurant which recommended the Hotel Zalm to us, notwithstanding drunken sailors, the hotel itself was first class. Whilst we are sat outside drinking our beer in the sun, my brother Graham's favourite, Hertog Jan, David phones North Sea Ferries and is told boarding commences at four. The decision is made to board early and watch the match on the ship. So after finishing our drinks we make our way back to the car and fifteen minutes later arrive at the ferry terminal, just as the match kicks off at Wembley. There is a small queue of cars and quite a lot of motorbikes, perhaps heading for the Isle of Man TT races and after fifteen minutes no sign of any boarding. An enquiry reveals that boarding starts between four and five and tonight it is almost five before the queue starts to move. Undaunted we make our way to the lounge after checking into our cabin, eager to catch the last half hour of the game, only to discover that there is no Sky TV on the boat. I leave Irene and David in the bar and walk to Langhams Brasserie and book a window table for dinner at six thirty, determined to derive some benefit from our early arrival, before rejoining the others for a drink, which uses up the last of my sterling currency. On board the ferry it is best to pay everything in English currency as the Euro prices seem to carry a twenty per cent mark up. We take our table at the appointed time and have a very relaxed and entertaining dinner, Irene orders chicken and David and I the ribeye steak, which on the way out was excellent. We spin the meal out until ten o'clock, enjoying the views of the coast as we sail into the sunset before turning in around eleven.