North-Holland landscape and skyscape

North-Holland landscapes, originally uploaded by CharlesFred.

Yesterday started off just liken the day before, cool wettish and a bit windy with only a vague promise by the weathermen (www.knmi.nl) that it might brighten up by the evening. After a late-ish start (without any hangover despite the merriment of the previous evening with our friends old and new outside the Elsa's), we got in touch with Rob and Ghislaine to borrow their car. We set off just before 1'ish with the sky covered by cloud and just a hint that it might be brightening up, but here we are about a half hour later just outside the North Holand cheese city of Alkmaar on the Schermer Polder, with the sky opened up with this beautiful mottled cloud.

Normally, we would go to the Lisse area to see the tuliups, but a photo in one of the freebie newspapers on the train a few weeks ago reminded me that there are many tulip fields the other side, which is why we came up to Alkmaar. After snapping various tulipscapes, we drove the shortish distance to the coast and went for a nice refeshing walk along the beach at Bergen-aan-Zee.

This windmill has beaen beautifully maintained and rennovated and is used to pump water up from the low-lying polder to the canal here in the foreground.