It was time to catch up with friends in Leeuwarden. Not only was Terry waiting for us in the port, but another Piper boat, Wanderlust, with Becky and Dave on board. We had crossed paths a few times, but never broken bread or shared a drink or two. This time we did both.

From Leeuwarden we headed west to Harlingen, stopping on the way at Franeker. This town was a university town from 1585 to 1811. The university was closed by Napoleon, when the then Kingdom of Holland was incorporated into the French Empire. Our primary purpose for our visit to the town was to view the 18th century orrery built into the ceiling of the living room of a resident of the town. Now what is an orrery I hear you say. An orrery is a mechanical model of the solar system that predicts the relative positions and motions of the planets and the moons. It is typically driven by a clockwork mechanism with a globe representing the sun at its centre. The Orrery built in 1774-1781 by wool carder Eise Eisinga is the oldest functioning planetarium in the world. Eise’s hobby was mathematics and he decide to construct his orrery in answer to the fear that the upcoming planetary conjunction would spell the end of the world. His model has been operating for 250 years with a slight hand reset done every 4 years to compensate for the leap year. The scale of the model is 1 millimetre to 1 million kms and does not include Uranus or Neptune. Not only were these planets not discovered at the time but Eise would have required a much bigger room to display them.

While we were waiting for our time slot to visit the planetarium (you must make a prior booking online) we went to the Museum Martena. Housed in a 15th century castle it contains both a historical collection of both of the town of Franeker and the university.

After 2 days of enjoying the sights of Franeker, we continued in a westerly direction to the port town of Harlingen. Peter was hoping to visit the chandler, but of course they were closed. Instead we visited the museum which unfortunately did not include English explanations of the artefacts. We had a day on board as a fierce storm blew in from the North Sea. The following day Terry arrived and we were able to take a boat trip around the harbour.