26 musicians from Charnwood Concert Band and Intermediate Band left Loughborough for their 2009 tour of Holland in August. We stayed in a sea-side resort called Noordwijk-aan-see.
Our first day comprised of a visit to Leiden in the morning, return to hotel for lunch and then onto Delft for more sight-seeing and our evening concert in the Maria van Jessechurch. The concert was well attended and well received with two standing ovations. Feeling very pleased with ourselves we decided to round the day off with a well earned drink or two in a local establishment.
Our second day was spent in Noordwijk where we set out to explore the town and beach before setting up for our afternoon concert outside a pancake house on the promenade. Although it was very windy and the music was blowing everywhere we managed to maintain a good performance, with a few laughs along the way. Thus followed a nice warming Hot Chocolate before we set out back to our hotel for evening meal. Of course, later we somehow ended up in the local establishment. They were starting to get to know us now and asked us to perform there the next evening as part of their weekend festival. Unfortunately, we already had a concert booked elsewhere.
Our third and last day was spent enjoying ourselves in Amsterdam, this started off with a two hour cruise along the canals and port, followed by lots of walking around Amsterdam where we were lucky enough to hit on a large festival with bands everywhere. Late afternoon we all boarded our coach once again to travel the few kilometres to our next performance. This was in a lovely picturesque town called Monnickendam, where we were appearing in the church that evening. Again we were well received and another standing ovation ensued. Afterwards we all piled into a local bar in Monnickendam for our last night, where some of the band members received awards for efforts made during the tour (all tongue in cheek of course).
The next morning we all (rather sadly) loaded the coach up and set out for our return to England highlighted by a visit to a French supermarket to stock up on necessary goods.
This was our third Tour and the band exceeded all expectations, everybody felt like they had achieved something and we arrived home with renewed vigour (and looking forward to our next tour in 2011). |
