Hausfrauing in Grau, Netherlands

One of the places that we want to visit is the little village of Grau. It is built in the fork of two rivers so almost everywhere you look there is water. Because it is both small and very pretty, there are relatively few berths and they are all occupied. However, just as we are about to give up and leave we spot a boat of similar size to our own. While David hovers alongside I ask the woman on board if we can raft up for the night. She stops vacuuming her immaculate afterdeck for a moment and looks at us in consternation. The boat can only recently have left the showroom. A refusal is imminent. Before it can arrive, I glance over my shoulder at the circling boats behind us, also looking for a berth. ‘You’ll get someone,’ I say. ‘There are only two of us and we’re very quiet.’ She is unconvinced. ‘Our last raft-up was eight young men on a bonding exercise,’ I tell her truthfully. ‘They sat out on deck talking and drinking beer all night.’ She looks past me at the circling boats. She is beginning to weaken. Time for the clincher. ‘And clambering over our boat to go ashore to the toilets.’ ‘Alright,’ she says. We gather our full complement of fenders together, to reassure her that we won’t scratch anything, but she looks at them with horror. ‘No, no, no!’ she says and fetches a set of brand new white ones instead. Ours might leave a mark on her glistening white topsides. Her anxiety, as our electricity cable is looped across her pristine swimming platform, is palpable. After we are finally settled to her satisfaction we leave her to some serious polishing and tip-toe across her new teak deck for a look around ashore. Grau is a place of narrow cobbled streets, pretty old cottages and interesting shops. It has an impossibly large church for so small a village, surrounded by a leafy close of tiny houses. Add a popular restaurant and some cheerful bars and that’s more-or-less Grau. Not somewhere to book for a week, perhaps, but a delightful place to spend a sunny afternoon not polishing the deck furniture. To read more about our travels and books go to: www.sandraclayton.Web.officelive.com