Dunes revisited

After admiring the flower floats at the Bulbflower Parade in Sassenheim yesterday (20 huge cars decorated with uncountable amount of tulips, daffodils and hyacinths), this morning I drove our guests to Keukenhof. This world famous tulip park is in full blossom these days. Also, it is packed with Chinese tourists. It was very early and I wanted to spend a quiet moment so I decided to return to the dunes again.

I chose the water supply dunes of Amsterdam (Amsterdamse waterleidingduinen), a natural area behind the North Sea beach stretching from Noordwijk to Zandvoort. Here the drinking water for the residents of Amsterdam is being ‘produced’ by the natural process of filtering the rain water through the dune sand.  After 12 years in NL, I still have trouble believing that so close to Amsterdam, the landscape can look this rough and beautiful.

The run took me about 5 km into the dune area. It was sunny and quite windy but most of all: empty. It felt like I had the dunes for myself – just checking the animal tracks, trying to spot some water birds and enjoying the fresh air in my lungs. After 10 km it was hard to get back into the car… but the Sunday breakfast at home (hopefully with some interesting updates of other bloggers) was tempting too.