Recently our river water levels were higher than in the past winters. Usually the quay above is fairly wide and -above all- completely dry. Now it was a bit tricky, yet some visitors weren’t afraid of a sudden unintended acceleration.
The oldest ride, a 1997 Opel Corsa B with a 1.2 liter engine.
To the driver of this 2006 Audi A6 (2.4 liter V6): do not mix up the brake pedal with the gas pedal!
Lena waves.
The road to the quay, a temporary aquaplaning test track.
Unsurprisingly no one wants to get cold feet.
2005 Mercedes-Benz E 280 CDI (W211-series), powered by a 3.0 liter V6 diesel, 190 DIN-hp. Although I prefer the improved 2006-2009 W211 Mk2, I certainly wouldn’t kick this one out of my driveway.
The Benz driver has seen enough, he’s leaving.
When the river forelands flood, all animals (regardless their size) living there have to flee or have to be evacuated. This guy here is just staying put, having a keen eye for an easy prey.
…Now what was the title of that Talking Heads song again?
I was pleasantly suprised when I took the train from Utrecht to Den Bosch and eventually crossed the river Waal and see scens like this. When all the floodplains are filled it almost seems like the river tripled in width. The untrained eye and uninformed mind might find this scary to look at and could think that the whole country is about to be flooded, but alas, we know what they’re doing!
An Amphicar’s playground.
Yikes. Leave the car. Take the stroopwafel.
Al Green and Teenie Hodges wrote, “Take Me to the River”. The Talking Heads are great, as is their cover.
He may have been thinking of the Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere”, but I like your thinking. Both songs are great.
That’s the one, yes. Although “Take Me to the River” is very appropriate too! (Never heard of the song, till now).
Ha! I didn’t even think of “Road to Nowhere”. I’m glad I contributed to this!
Is that the Wall/Rhine? If so, exactly where? I’d like to look at the area on googlemaps to see the topography of the area.
I get geography lessons from Curbside Classic; this will be another one.
The river Waal, Veerdam Druten.
Thanks Johannes. I found the exact spot – on the south side of the Waal with the benches at the end of the quay. Close to Nijmegen & Deutschland beyond. Interesting and I’d love to see it in person.
Here’s a “virtual tour” I posted two years ago, with the same quay.
http://www.curbsideclassic.com/uncategorized/cc-global-hiking-along-the-river-man-made-landscape-ships-buildings-and-a-few-trucks/
If I lived in a flood plain, say in Louisiana if not Holland, I would want a Ford GPA or GM DUKW on hand, just in case.
“We are completely cut off!”
No worries!
Loved that movie as a kid… especially when Chitty Chitty Bang Bang takes flight! A full 100 years or more (in fictional* movie time) BEFORE the Jetson’s car takes to the skies ;o)…
* we STILL don’t have ‘viable’ flying cars that we were promised. LOL
Here’s the River Thames in Twickenham, South-west London, at high tide. Despite signs and flashing lights, this happens again and again. Incidentally, the background buildings are on a Thames island called Eel Pie Island, home of an R’n’B club where The Who first made a name for themselves.
No wonder Audis and VWs have so many electrical problems.
It’s the same here in AZ, but with flash floods. We have a “Stupid Driver Law,” which imposes stiff fines for recovering vehicles stranded at marked flash-flood crossing points.
These photos make me uncomfortable! Here in Houston, Texas, flooding is a pretty common occurrence but never as bad as it was this year with Harvey. I would definitely not want to put my car on a narrow strip of land being flooded by a rising river!
Our house escaped flooding this year, thank goodness. I had some minor flooding in a previous house once, and had a car flooded badly once due entirely to my own stupidity. The car recovered and I learned how much water NOT to drive through. So, I hope these steel nerved Dutch drivers are not as foolhardy as they appear.
In the background of the fifth photo you can see the dike, it’s the green wall. This kind of water level is still utterly save, plenty of extra German water (because that’s where it’s coming from) can be swallowed by the river.
Nevertheless, even many Dutch folks who don’t live close to the sea or one of the main rivers will shit their pants when seeing the water “is coming to town”.
Not much better a bit upstream either.
(photo by Geolina163 on Wikipedia)
I learned in my teen years to stay away from flooded roads. The West Valley Highway between Auburn and Kent used to flood regularly near the Smith Brothers Dairy, and the water usually would be still and maybe five inches deep at most. Once I drove on a back road near there on one of those flood days and came to a place where there was a sizable current across the road. The water there was only a couple of inches deep, but the extent to which I could feel the current pulling against my old 1946 Ford made me realize that any flooded road where there is any current at all should be avoided.
Excellent point. There is simply not enough tire patch (off-road or not) to offer sufficient resistance to the immense force moving water imposes upon the wheels. Vehicles caught may get washed downstream in the flood channel to where it is very difficult to extract occupants.
Flash floods may occur some distance from the cloudburst producing them. Once, we were caught in a microburst so violent, visibility was only a couple feet. I pulled off the road, afraid we’d get rear-ended even though we were on a boulevard.
It only takes a few inches of fast-moving water to be able to sweep a car away. We see Spring flooding here often, and when the river crests its banks, it’s almost a certainty we’ll see one or two SUVs abandoned in the middle of a swamped road.
And of course more than 50 years since West Valley Hwy near the former Smith Bros Dairy floods at least once of twice each fall or winter.
I am surprised they don’t close that car park, or can they predict the river height that precisely?
Here in Melbourne (Vic, Australia) we had a storm at the start of December with the usual casualties of people driving through flooded rail underpasses, but an unusual one was the main highway between Melbourne and Sydney cut due to flooding.
Yes, river heights can and are predicted very precisely, and it’s a continuous process.
The water levels of our rivers don’t rise due to rain in the Netherlands, they rise due to rain and/or melting snow south and south-east of us.
I have one major always-get-the-willies phobia – bodies of water on both sides of my car. I broke into a sweat looking at those pictures.
It could be time to bring swamp buggy racing to Holland.
Reminds me of a time a couple of years ago when we parked our Prius next to a restaurant on Chincoteague Bay in Virginia (only a barrier island away from the Atlantic). We parked away from the other cars to avoid door dings. When we came out of the restaurant, this is the sight that greeted us:
Dave M.
I went to visit my aunt a few years ago and she took me to visit a cousin about 55-60 miles away…if we took a ferry. (The trip is nearly doubled when you don’t take the ferry.) Like you, sort of, I don’t like being anywhere the water is so close to the sides and bottom of the car.) I was sure glad when that ferry got to the other side of the lake.