28 Thousand Steps.. is this normal?

‘Let’s walk round the deserted Veermansplaat island’ were more or less Lynn’s first words this morning.

So despite the warning sign we set off

It’s a big island. Bigger than we both anticipated as it turned out.

But no large wildlife to be seen. The middle is heavily wooded and we went right round the outside so they were probably in there watching us!

There are acres of large eaten oyster shells

But what’s eaten them? There seem few seagulls on this island and though there were quite a few oyster catchers (the clue is in the name) I can’t imagine a smallish bird could lift a live oyster this size. Just the shells are heavy enough.

The only wildlife we saw were voracious horse flies and these things which looked as though they should be avoided, and like there’d be more of them soon!

We found samphire and some mint – I can smell the potatoes being cooked with the mint right now 👍 though Lynn might have overdone it a bit. We could end up with pomme de Terre Aquafresh

Back to the boat and we’re still the only ones on the whole island (there’s only one landing place) but just as we got ready to go two more boats turned up, so we’d just been lucky. We were beginning to think we shouldn’t have been there as on one of the charts the whole island says ‘verboden’

We decided to head back to Bruinisse marina as we’d run out of water and it’s such a relief to get back to hot running water, showers and flushing toilets. You don’t think much about these things until they’re not available.

I’ve just switched on the electric fan heater too!! What Luxury !!

On the way back (downwind 5kn under headsail) we got another seagull visit. It was more or less in the same place so I’m thinking it might have been the same seagull, perhaps it’s a regular thing here. It was certainly more friendly than the Belgian one that took Lynn’s sandwich out of her hand.

The lateral buoys round here have little xmas trees on top of them. Very festive!

Back at the marina the on site shop had closed so it was more walking into the town – the final part of the days steps – for bread and more importantly Beer!

And there were sheep too!

Having owned sheep in the past I think I have an understanding of them and I like to think they have of me too 👍