There was a good tourist center with a large floor map of Walcheren Island, a video display of sights in Middelburg, and good maps and brochures as well as traditional tourist knick knacks. There was also a small scale model of the town, and some lovely churches and buildings to see. Middelburg was destroyed by bombing in WW II in reprisal for some Resistance activities but was rebuilt according to the original architecture dating back to the 1500's. So far, it is my favourite town. It would have been nice to spend several days enjoying it, but we left by noon hour the next day.
Fuel is very expensive over here.
Apparently we misread the exceptions to the regular hours, as we are using a Dutch chart which lists the opening times of locks and bridges. They are at crazy times, depending of course on rush hours and train schedules. That is why so many of the barges are low, so they do not have to wait for bridge openings as we sail boaters with 14 meter masts do. So we came back into the channel leading into downtown Gouda with the intention of going through some of the city's bridges to the downtown marina. We checked our chart and they should have.