TWINNING WEEKEND with AMU and GIESSEN

RCCH Twinning Weekend with Aalsmeer-Mijdrecht-Uithoorn (AMU) and Giessen Altes Schloss, 6–9 June 2025

Shortly after the Rotary Club of Chichester Harbour (RCCH) was founded in 1988, it was decided that it would be a good idea to form a twinning arrangement with a club in Europe as the Rotary Club of Chichester had their link with the Rotary Club of Chartres and Chichester Priory Rotary Club had established a link with the Rotary Club of Ba-le-Duc.

The search was on to find a club with which there would be no linguistic barriers, and so it came about that a twinning arrangement was made with the Rotary Club of Mijdrecht.  Mijdrecht is a small town a few miles south of Amsterdam, and the first visit by members of RCCH took place 25 years ago.  It was interesting to reflect this year that our friendship with some of their members went back that far.

Back in the early days I well remember attending the Mijdrecht charter night, a children’s football competition in the rain and probably most memorably the Festival of Neptune.  This is a water carnival held on a lake formed by the excavation of peat many years ago to fuel the fires of Amsterdam.  It takes place at the end of September on the weekend before the boats are laid up for the winter.  There were many brightly illuminated vessels which formed the procession, and we were on one of the numerous spectator boats.

The Mijdrecht club merged and is now known as AMU, which stands for Aalsmeer-Mijdrecht-Uithoorn.  Aalsmeer is where the largest flower market in the world is situated, and you are bound to have bought flowers which have come through the market there.  We talk about a ‘Dutch auction’ but that is exactly what happens there.  Each of the buyers is registered and the price for each lot starts at a high price as shown on a giant dial, which then goes down until one of the buyers presses a button to register the one and only bid and is successful.  It is not like an auction here in the UK where there are successive higher bids.

There were already contacts on the Dutch side with the Rotary Club of Giessen Altes Schloss (“old castle”) for several years, and with the merger of the two Dutch clubs to form AMU it became a three-way partnership.

Prior to Covid, members from our club visited Trier, known for its spectacular Roman remains, for a fascinating weekend organised by Giessen.  Then 2 years ago we visited them again – this time staying near Heidelberg.  With our club having been the hosts in 2024, when we were based at the Avisford Park Hotel, it was the turn of the Dutch once again and we all stayed in a hotel in Egmond aan Zee, a holiday town on the North Sea coast near Alkmaar.

AMU Rotary Club had prepared a varied programme for our visit, which 16 members of our club enjoyed.

On arrival on the Friday, we were greeted at a beachside restaurant for a welcome buffet near the hotel where we were all staying.  This was an opportunity to make new friendships and renew old ones.

On Saturday we had a choice of a cultural day visiting the town of Hoorn for a guided tour, a boat trip and visit to a museum, which all those who chose that option enjoyed. The remainder of the group (myself included) decided to be more energetic and hired bikes and followed a 35 km route through the woods and sand dunes along the coast, with a coffee stop at the foot of a huge dune at the Slufter and lunch at a beach café at Bergen aan Zee before returning to our hotel.

After all the talk locally about the new Westgate roundabout in Chichester, I can now claim to have driven and ridden a bike round Dutch roundabouts in the Netherlands!  There is no doubt that the Dutch road and cycle track network is better planned and maintained, and the attitude of all road users more respectful, than they are here in Chichester...

Saturday evening was the formal (well actually very informal) dinner with entertainment including a quiz devised by the Germans when some short speeches were given and the Dutch and Germans exchanged the cup which each visiting club has to take to their hosts.  So, the Dutch will have to take the cup to Germany next year.

On Sunday morning we all visited the modern art museum Kranenburgh at Bergen Binnen – an interesting experience if perhaps not all the exhibits might have been thought by some to be in the best possible taste!

The official programme concluded with a farewell lunch, once again held in the beachside restaurant where we’d been greeted on Friday, but this time the weather was very different, with a strong wide blowing off the sea and kite surfers taking advantage of it.  It all looked very dangerous!

As the prospect of getting in a car to drive back to Chichester immediately afterwards seemed rather too much to contemplate, and the visit had been relatively short, some of the group stayed over and finally made the journey back along the motorway network through the Channel Tunnel on ‘Le Shuttle’ and then home.

What we had not bargained for was that it was a Bank Holiday weekend in the Netherlands and so the roads around Amsterdam on the Friday afternoon were particularly slow, however the traffic was fine on the Monday morning.  What we’d also not anticipated was that there would be so few service areas along the way in comparison with France or the UK.

All in all, it was a great weekend, and we look forward to what the Germans will arrange for the next exchange visit in 2026.

Michael Bevis

RCCH International Committee Chair 2024–2025