Oudewater and Geithoorn

As the motorways are toll free in The Netherlands, we made good use of them to drive towards our final destination of the day, Giethoorn. Before that, though, we stopped at Oudewater, about an hour north of the Biesbosch.

Oudewater became famous in the 16th century for weighing people who had been accused of being witches. It is thought that over one million women were killed as a result of the witch hunts across Europe during this time. It was a time when petty grievances and superstition ran rife. Many women were tortured, drowned or burnt alive due to the fact that it was extremely hard to prove their innocence. However, one test was about how much they weighed as witches were thought to be very light in order to fly around on broomsticks. So, women accused of witchcraft could be weighed. The town weighing house was generally used as this was where goods were normally weighed. Many of the weigh masters were bribed to ensure the women only weighed a few pounds. This happened when Emperor Charles V was passing by and he ordered the woman to be reweighed at Oudewater as he knew the weighing there was reliable. The woman survived and was given a certificate stating her weight which was then proof of her not being a witch. After that, the town drew thousands of women who for a small fee could be weighed. So, of course, Liz demanded to be weighed and got a certificate to prove that she wasn’t a witch.

We then continued north for another 90 minutes to reach Giethoorn and found the lovely, quirky campsite Haamstede (P4N#32120) about a 20 minute walk from the centre.

We arrived around 19.00 so we had a quick G&T before heading out to find our restaurant, L’Achterhuus, in the centre of the village of Giethoorn. Giethoorn means goat horn as they found hundreds of horns when they drained the area in the 13th century. They believed that the remains were from the St Elizabeth Day flood of 1170. It now is a delightfully pretty village with no cars that felt to us like a cross between Cambridge, Marlow, Cotswolds and Norfolk Broads with criss crossing canals flanked by quaint thatched cottages on the banks and hump backed bridges. Due to the large number of tourists, there are also hundreds of small electric boats to hire to meander around the village for an hour or two. Dinner was gorgeous with Liz having guinea fowl and Jo had boneless ribs, washed down with a glass of wine. A walk around a deserted village afterwards made for a very pleasant evening.

The next morning, Sunday September 6, we took advantage of the coaches not having arrived yet to walk around the village in daylight. It really was very pretty, helped by the lovely weather no doubt.