Last weekend’s trip to see the hunebedden of Drenthe had a couple more stops which are worthy of note, though the Saturday and Sunday were both very wet.

Logistical details: We stayed at an AirBnB in Steendam, half an hour east of Groningen. This was not geographically very close to where we wanted to be, but the place looked charming and the price was good.

In fact, I can honestly say that in nine years of using AirBnB, this was the best experience I have had. The apartment was just as charming as it looked in the photos and very comfortable. For a modest extra charge the hosts provided a lavish breakfast, with enough leftovers to keep us going for the rest of the day. Recommended.

Saturday lunch: La Place at Meerkerk motorway service station, went for stir fry, as good as you would expect in a place like that.

Saturday afternoon tea: Café Wolthoorn & Co in Groningen, catching up with my old friend J, who I had not seen since I stayed with him in the summer of 1985, forty years ago.

Saturday dinner: as recommended by J, the Capricio restaurant in Groningen, with a friend of F’s. Because of the rain, we did not explore Groningen very much, though I hope we’ll get back some time.

I’ve written up the first half of Sunday at length already. Lunch was bought at the AH supermarket in Rolde, near hunebedden D17 and D18. Because it was still very wet, we went from there straight to the Drents Museum in Assem, which generally has good write-ups. (Though it had a major theft last January.)

Like all Dutch provincial museums, the Drents Museum has some quite stunning art (including the obligatory van Goghs, which are however difficult to photograph). A couple of pieces caught my eye. Here’s “Café Krul”, by Peter Hartwig:

And here’s “Lies with Tarzan book” by Jan Sluijters, one of several paintings of his family members in very different styles. (‘Lies’ was his daughter’s name, it’s not a reference to untruths.)

As I have noted elsewhere, there are also some nice artistic portrayals of the province’s main attraction.

The Drents Museum is also home to, I kid you not, the world’s oldest known boat, the Pesse canoe, believed to date from 8000 BC and therefore twice as old as the hunebedden.

The museum also has several preserved bog bodies, all dating from the Iron Age, the most moving of which is the Yde girl, strangled at sixteen and given to the gods of the marsh. I did not photograph her; it seemed disrespectful. There is a thoughtful audio narration of the exhibit.

I must say that I came to Drenthe somewhat cynically, noting that one of the other main attractions of the province is a house where Vincent van Gogh lived for all of two months in 1883, now a museum, and that otherwise there is not much to see (an outraged Drentenaar friend also cites Westerbork). But both the Drents Museum and the Hunebed Centre 20 km away really impressed me with their attractive and interactive exhibits; and as the sunlight spilled over the flat fields through the rain clouds, I could understand how van Gogh must have been inspired by the interplay of colour and visual texture. I would happily go back. (Also there are still 48 hunebedden to explore.)

Having said that, the Drents Museum’s Café Pingo provided us with the one truly unpleasant catering experience of the trip, as staff ignored us at length even though it was far from full.

Sunday dinner: the Kaap Steendam restaurant, within walking distance of the AirBnB, with a very nice view over the Schildmeer.

On Monday we took a slow journey home, stopping for lunch in Deventer with A, who au paired for us back in 2002, and her other half M. I attempted to re-take one of the 2002 photos of F and A; while I didn’t really succeed, it’s fairly clear that one of them has changed more than the other.

The more recent of those two photos was taken in De Buren van Schimmelpenninck, where we had a very nice lunch. I introduced F to the concept of the uitsmijter.

I had briefly visited Deventer in 1985, but only to go to the cinema while staying with a friend in nearby Raalte. (Police Academy 2, if I remember correctly.) Appropriately perhaps, here’s a sculpture of a nineteenth-century jailbreak from the former women’s prison, now an English-style tearoom.

Deventer is full of lovely old buildings, but the streets were also filled with amusement rides for the Whit Monday kermis.

An unexpected attraction – supposedly the oldest stone house in the Netherlands, dating to the 12th century.

Otherwise most things were closed because of the public holiday, so we’ll just have to go back.

We had one more stop on our way home, at the war cemetery in Venray, but that deserves another post.