The dune belt of North Holland, a frontline against the sea and enemies alike

Cycling Texel: the Eierland Lighthouse and the last WWII battlefield in Europe

The end of August was our last chance to catch the summer warmth and go on one more adventure before the autumn rain and wind set in. Our friends Anzhela and Mykyta suggested Texel, an island in North Holland where none of us had been before. A while back, we had explored the former island of Marken together, and now we were at the beginning of another coastal trip.

The island said “hello” with a raincloud.

The day started sunny as our train sped toward Den Helder, a mainland town from where ferries depart for Texel. Soon, though, clouds rolled across the sky, and we realized autumn hadn’t checked the calendar and was much closer than expected. We were talking about how many waterproof layers each of us had, so I didn’t even bother to look around Den Helder. I only started paying attention once we were on Texel, riding along a straight asphalt dike.

Low tide left the boats sitting on the sand, waiting for the sea to come back.

Our trip fell on the weekend of Independence Day in Ukraine, the native land of all four of us. Ukrainians and Dutch locals hung blue-and-yellow flags in various corners of the country, showing solidarity with Ukraine in its resistance against the Russian invasion. People gathered for the “Run for Ukraine” in major cities to honor fallen defenders, but not being avid runners, we chose a bicycle ride instead. Oksanka draped a flag over her shoulders as we moved deeper into the island. Anzhela in a blue jacket and Mykyta in yellow and orange made a flag of their own, too.

The only bright colors around, and we brought all of them.

In 2022, Russia brought the largest armed conflict to Europe since World War II, and Texel is often called Europe’s last battlefield, where WWII was still fought until May 20, 1945 — for nearly two weeks after Nazi Germany’s surrender. This final clash occurred when Georgian prisoners of war mutinied against their German captors stationed on the island. None of us knew this parallel when we got off the ferry.

For once, I was in the photo instead of behind the camera.

As we rode, we’d encounter plenty of remaining scars from the German occupation of the Netherlands. Even in a place as picturesque as the tip of Texel — with its red Eierland Lighthouse and tiled-roof houses — there was a bunker. Its gray silhouette was hidden in the grass at the base. During the war, the Georgians made their last stand at the lighthouse, which the Germans heavily shelled. The current tower was built around the damaged structure, leaving the original battle-dented wall preserved inside.

The Eierland lighthouse is named after a former island, joined to Texel by a sand dike.

We couldn’t linger for the sunset, though — our B&B called about collecting the keys. As city dwellers accustomed to round-the-clock convenience, we’d forgotten we were on an island where life winds down by 6 p.m. It was probably for the best, saving us from getting soaked in the cold night rain. But even on a tight schedule, I couldn’t help pulling over to capture the pink sky overhead.

Orange eyes peeking through the clouds.

I heard the raindrops hitting the window as Oksanka and I lay in bed, debating whether we should start the next day with dunes, architecture, or a local brewery.

Den Hoorn’s oldest farmhouse, the heather dunes, and a seal trip to Noorderhaaks

We ended up starting with architecture after all. While the island’s capital, Den Burg, where we stayed, had its charm, we were craving something a bit more raw and untouched than shop-dominated streets. And we found it a few kilometers south, in Den Hoorn.

Low walls against the island wind, steep thatch against the rain.

We were picking up speed when I called out, “Hey, let’s stop here!” A house by the path had caught my eye, proudly displaying the name “’t Torenhuis” and the year 1578. We’d stumbled upon Texel’s oldest farmhouse. It’s the last trace of a medieval village that was once the primary settlement here. After its harbor silted up, the village slowly vanished. The name “Torenhuis” (“Tower House”) hints at a history you can no longer see: it used to stand right beside a medieval church tower. The tower is long gone, but if you look closely at the top of the house’s gable, you’ll spot a wooden finial carved in the shape of a church tower — it even has a miniature bell!

Living quarters at the front, and behind them a long thatched wing that I’d guess was once the barn.

Speaking of churches, we arrived at Den Hoorn’s Reformed Church, marked by a gleaming white tower visible from kilometers away. It stood among open fields on the edge of the village.

From the rear, the church seemed to end too abruptly. It was once longer, but only three bays remain, closed off by this gable in 1646.

We circled the church, gazing at its white-plastered tower. From the 17th century, it officially served as a daytime beacon for sailors navigating the treacherous sea passage nearby. I suspect the white plaster was there to stand out against the dunes from afar.

The tower isn’t beside the church. It’s half built into it, and the entrance is the tall pointed arch at its base.

I could have spent all morning hunting for more historic buildings, but Anzhela hurried us toward the dunes; she’d heard that August transforms them into a sea of purple heather.

Heather means the dune is old: young, lime-rich sand won’t take it.

Meanwhile, it got warmer, so we took off our jackets. The dunes around us were carpeted in blooming heather — not as loud as a lavender field, but its plush, spongy look contrasted with the pale grass.

Oksanka took the sandy path up, spread her arms, and looked ready to take off.

Looking at these wild landscapes today, I couldn’t imagine them completely barren just a few decades ago. During the severe “Hunger Winter” of 1944–1945, when fuel vanished from the island, both locals and occupying forces stripped the dunes of turf, heather, and shrubs for heating and cooking. The German army further scarred the coast by fortifying it for the Atlantic Wall, digging minefields and pouring hundreds of bunkers and trenches into the sand.

Heather lives 30 to 40 years, but its seeds can wait in the sand for a century.

We followed a trail up to the top of a dune and saw the foamy sea waves a few hundred meters away. I reached into my bike bag for the six-pack of local Texel beer and, without a word, gestured toward the water.

A whole street of beach huts that will be gone by winter.

None of us had a bottle opener, so I pulled a house key from my pocket. The ride had shaken the beer, so we opened it carefully to keep the foam where it belonged — out on the waves, not on our hands and clothes. On Texel, the signature local pour is “Skuumkoppe,” a dark wheat beer. I’d had it plenty of times before, but never in its native habitat. It smelled like the memory of a campfire from two nights ago, but tasted nothing like the harshness of chewing on charcoal.

Our beach session: too cold to swim, just right for beer.

Sitting in the sand, listening to the hiss of the tide, I kept repeating the word “skuumkoppe” to myself. I later found out it’s the island dialect for “foam crests” — the white seafoam riding the tops of the North Sea waves along the shore. Finishing our six-pack right there, watching those exact crests, felt too fitting to be an accident.

The Texel brewery makes it using island-grown barley, wheat, and dune water.

Texel attracts hundreds of seals, who gather on nearby sandbanks to rest before heading back out to sea. To catch a glimpse, we made our way to Oudeschild, the island’s fishing harbor, where we booked a speedboat ride to the shallows.

Dutch East India ships once waited off this coast for a fair wind to Asia. Our expedition was to the nearest sandbank to see some seals.

The farther we pushed into open water, the higher the waves rose, driving most passengers inside the cabin. But we stayed out on deck, taking the cold spray to the face. Then, one by one, slick seal heads began bobbing above the surface, their curious eyes fixed right on us.

Behind our wake, the gray warships of Den Helder, the Dutch navy’s main base.

The seals kept their distance, though. Captivating as it was in the moment, I couldn’t get a single decent picture of them. But I did capture Oksanka’s joy as she squealed, “Look! A seal!” pointing where a shiny head had just slipped beneath the surface.

Oksanka squeaked at every single seal that day.

The skipper announced our final stop: Noorderhaaks, a strip of sand born from the clash of opposing tidal currents. This uninhabited sandbar slowly “walks” northeast toward Texel every year, shaped entirely by wind and tide. It has become a sanctuary for seals, who bask in the sun and raise their pups here.

Noorderhaaks from a respectful distance, the only view the seals approve of.

Seals naturally stick to the water’s edge, ready to dive in at the first sign of trouble. Knowing this, skippers keep a generous distance, bound by strict conservation rules to ensure the animals can rest undisturbed.

Our boat came with binoculars, and Mykyta was the last to give his back.

Approaching the harbor, I was shocked to realize an hour and a half had passed — it went by in what felt like ten minutes. We were only just scratching the surface of the island, while our weekend was slipping away with the sun well past its peak. The island opened a different side to us: now that sheep were let out to graze, it looked like a giant farm.

Texel gave its name to a sheep breed now raised far beyond the island.

Mykyta was our sole voice of sanity, warning us that we were riding farther away from the ferry, but the three of us weren’t ready to turn back. We pushed on to De IJzeren Kaap (“Iron Cape”), an 1854 cast-iron sea beacon designed by architect Quirinus Harder. Though it never held a lamp, its ornate frame stood out sharply against the empty expanse.

What you see is three stories. The fourth disappeared when the dike was raised.

We paused by the beacon to take a closer look at it and the surrounding fields, and I finally understood why we had covered so much distance so quickly. The wind was at our backs, silently helping us along. Oof, we were going to have to fight that same wind all the way back to the harbor across half the island…

Mallow, daisies, and corn marigolds, all leaning hard the same way in the wind.

The last thing we did on Texel was split a box of incredibly sweet yellow raspberries from a local honor-system stand. We dropped a few coins into the tin and took our treat. We stood right there on the roadside, passing the berries around, soaking in the last rays of sun.

Backlit by the sun, each berry glowed like a tiny amber lantern.

From there, it was a non-stop headwind battle all the way to the port. Mykyta didn’t hesitate to hit us with an “I told you so,” but we stubbornly pretended everything was according to the plan. Yeah, the plan to arrive ten minutes before the last ferry to the mainland. Oksanka just laughed and called it the classic ending to our adventures.

Den Helder: the art park, Napoleonic forts, and the Lange Jaap lighthouse

Our friends had to return to work on Monday — or so they claimed (aha, work in August). Oksanka and I, on the other hand, had taken the entire week off: neither of us wanted this to be over yet. It was finally a chance to get to know Den Helder as a town in its own right, not just an entryway to Texel. We decided to start the day with contemporary art at De Nollen, on the southern edge of town.

The light kept changing, and so did the colors: rust, green, and dry ochre.

Long before you needed a ticket and a guide to set foot inside, De Nollen was just a neglected patch of dunes, where locals dumped trash and hung out. It originally served as an outer defense line, with over twenty World War II bunkers buried in the landscape.

The giant apple peel isn’t as solid as it looks: touch it, and the whole spiral starts to sway.

In 1980, Dutch artist and sculptor Ruud van de Wint turned his back on traditional gallery exhibitions to craft what he called the “total artwork” in De Nollen. For 25 years, he transformed all fifteen hectares of the landscape, working continuously on site until his sudden death in 2006.

Every sculpture held its own trick, playing mind games with scale and perception. On one lawn, two curved metal forms reached upward like a pair of hare ears listening to the wind, while a third lay on the grass beside them.

Under those clouds, we could easily believe a storm had brought down the third post.

Next was a rusted iron dome that looked quite unimposing at first glance. It turned out to be hollow inside — reached by a tight, semi-underground passage, almost like entering a bunker.

No clue what was inside, and the holes on top didn’t help.

Inside, the entire chamber was washed in a deep ultramarine. The shell transformed into an artificial night sky, complete with little pinpricks of light that formed constellations around a central opening resembling a full moon. Oksanka looked up at the ceiling and said, “Van de Wint clearly took the whole bunker thing and turned it inside out. It’s like an ‘art bunker’ to make a statement against war.”

The brushstrokes give the blue its depth, like clouds wandering across the night.

At last, it was time to find out what that giant ribbed metal sculpture was all about — the one we’d spotted towering behind the fence before we even entered De Nollen.

It looked like a giant loaf of bread, sliced and pushed back together.

The guide didn’t rush to explain. He called a couple of little girls from our group forward and asked them to try pushing this 23-ton monster. My jaw dropped — it rotated with ease. Turns out, it rests on high-precision bearings, balanced so perfectly that friction barely exists. Even a child’s nudge makes the whole metal cocoon spin.

From the side, you can see the trick: one narrow pillar holding up the whole cocoon.

As we rode away, we talked about how Van de Wint coaxed genuine emotion out of such raw materials. But within just a few minutes of cycling toward Den Helder’s center, it clicked: he almost had no choice. Concrete and metal were the town’s native language, slicing the landscape into pieces with remnants of past wars.

We climbed onto Fort Dirksz Admiraal, a French fortification from 1812–1813 that was later remodeled and reused by the German military during the WWII occupation.

Every slope here was shaped by shovels, then poured over with concrete.

The bunkers were excavated, cleared of rubble, and threaded with a walking path — but nothing in front of us looked like manicured museum grounds. Concrete cracked; niches for artillery turrets stood open to the sky; graffiti crawled up the walls. My guess is this was somewhat deliberate: “passive preservation,” the practice of leaving a structure close to how it was found rather than making it look new. A fort largely rebuilt by Nazi Germany doesn’t get a fresh coat of paint — full renewal would edge too close to glorifying what it was built for, something both Dutch and German heritage practice seem to avoid.

Rusted fittings still circle the rim, where the gun once turned.

Below us lay a bastion from 1882, added decades after the fort’s Napoleonic founding and decades before the Germans would convert it for their own war. Its weathered green walls matched the surroundings so well that it almost disappeared against the slope.

The fort was built in a swamp; now it sits in a thicket.

We were wandering past a few old cannons when a nasty storm cloud came rushing toward us. Rain was clearly seconds away, and I started frantically looking around for anywhere to take shelter.

Every era of the fort left something behind.

We had just enough time to get to the nearest gun emplacement and duck inside the passage. Right on cue, it started pouring, raindrops rattling against our bicycle. I grabbed the bread and cheese from the bag, and we stood in the dry doorway, making sandwiches.

Of all the uses this bunker has had, ours was probably the most peaceful.

With nothing to do but wait out the rain, I passed the time reading the graffiti on the walls. They were in Dutch and English, mixed with doodles — like some prehistoric cave art. Then my eye caught something unexpected — in Ukrainian. Scrawled across the wall was: “Файне місто Тернопіль” (“Wonderful city of Ternopil”). I was caught off guard. Of course, it was still graffiti on a historical site, but also the sweetest thing anyone could have written. This phrase comes from a popular 1994 rock song that became the unofficial motto of the city. Hundreds of people would walk past those letters without a second glance, but to us, it brought a spark of warmth to a grim military ruin.

The only words on these walls we didn’t need to translate.

By the time we swallowed the last bite of our sandwiches, the downpour had stopped. The ground dried fast under our wheels as we rode to the harbor to catch a view of the open waterline. The ferries were in constant motion: while one docked at the terminal loading passengers, the other glided across the Marsdiep toward Texel.

After a whole boat trip without a decent seal shot, these two posed without complaint.

Den Helder takes up the whole point of the peninsula, wrapped on three sides by heavy dikes. We climbed onto the dike and walked a bit. Up there, even the benches had small protective walls built around them so you could sit without getting blown away by the wind.

A bench on each side and a weathervane on top, so you know which side to sit on.

We crossed over the dike to ride closer to the water. The sea had settled now, and the only reminder of the rain was clouds hanging over Texel in the distance. We could look down into Fort Erfprins, a formidable fortification the navy still uses for training — ah, this is why there was zero graffiti on its walls.

The wind had combed all the grass on the rampart.

At 49 hectares, it’s the biggest fort in the Netherlands. Much like Fort Dirksz Admiraal, Fort Erfprins dates back to the 1800s, one of hundreds of forts that spread across Europe in Napoleon’s wake. Local farmers, craftsmen, and prisoners of war did the actual digging and bricklaying. Then the stronghold went through heavy upgrades under German occupation in World War II.

Radar masts on top of 19th-century earthworks — the fort is still on duty.

We crisscrossed over the dike just to watch the contrast — the open sea on one side, and the flat, low-lying land on the other. The sea was empty of boats or yachts. We only passed a lone fisherman standing knee-deep in the water, watching his float bob on the waves.

Too rough for a rowboat today.

The sky was shifting rapidly above our heads: sun and clouds swapped places so fast it made everything look surreal. As we pedaled past the edge of town, a huge red lighthouse grew larger ahead of us — the Den Helder Light, nicknamed “Lange Jaap” (“Tall Jake”).

Drizzle or not, the dog still needed its walk, under the tallest cast-iron lighthouse in the world.

This 63.5-meter-high giant is one of the world’s biggest traditional lighthouses — the ones housing the lamp system and staircase rather than just being a concrete post with full automation. I glanced over at Oksanka: “The tallest back home, Adziogol Lighthouse near Kherson, is almost the same height, just half a meter over. And they are both red. Did you know that?”

I took shelter from the sun in a road sign’s shade, trying to see the seams between the lighthouse’s 1088 cast-iron plates.

The tower was visible from every nearby corner. As we rode through the village of Huisduinen, it dominated the horizon even though it stood around sea level instead of on a dune top.

This is the village’s third try; the sea swallowed the first in 1170 and the second in 1570.

Atlantic Wall bunkers and the dune patchwork south of Den Helder

We turned slightly inland toward another relic of World War II — the FL250 “Kroontjesbunker” (“Crown Bunker”), named for its distinctive shape. The Germans built it to track aircraft movements and relay flight paths to nearby anti-aircraft guns — part of a chain stretching across the coast and islands. The bunker was covered in bright graffiti, which made it clear to us it was long out of service.

Someone forgot a rook on this giant dune chessboard.

But then we looked around and saw a motley variety of dune textures. The heather here was rusty and dried out, nothing like the bright purple shrubs on Texel. We’d entered the Grafelijkheidsduinen (“County Dunes”), once owned by the Counts of Holland.

One wind-shaped pine and dry grass: for a moment, it looked more like the savanna than Holland.

We rode out of the built-up area into wilderness. Not a single house, only a fenced-off mute expanse. The ground was covered with reddish moss and lichens and looked completely alien. I kept shaking my head: “Damn, this is straight up Mars.”

The fence was the only thing that told me this wasn’t Mars.

Farther south of Den Helder, only a handful of villages and hamlets flanked the long stretch of dunes. Just like on Texel, the Germans left this coastline stripped and scarred; every dune, lichen, and blade of grass around us was a carefully orchestrated reboot. Lone thorny shrubs with dark hips soon appeared along the track, prompting us to pull over for a closer look. The Dutch call them “duinroos” — dune roses. Their berries are meant for local wildlife: as the fruit softens, it feeds thrushes, and whatever falls on the ground becomes dinner for field mice and hedgehogs.

Its Latin name, “Rosa spinosissima,” means roughly “the spiniest rose,” and I can see why.

The next turn brought us to the Artillery Bunker M219, one of only two of its kind. It never saw action, though — the war ended before it was finished. Originally designed to hold a turret with guns, its shaft now supports a radar. While I inspected the bunker’s exterior, Oksanka read the mural text nestled between two mermaids: “Ha-ha! It says ‘Life’s a Beach.’ So true.”

An unfinished gun bunker with a peacetime career as a canvas for murals.

I looked up at the menacing sky, but it refused to release a single drop of rain until the end of the day. It just hung overhead like a bruised canopy, giving enough freshness to keep us from sweating in the heat.

Not the moon; that’s the sun, doing its best through the clouds.

We soon entered the lush dunes near Julianadorp. Their rolling slopes resembled a miniature forest, only built out of dense grass instead of trees. I started counting how many species I could spot along the trail. Some grew waist-high and swayed in soft green waves; others bristled in stiff, straw-colored tufts.

No one else on the trail, just a table set for nobody.

Looking at the dense greenery, we felt it was a miracle anything survived here at all. The top layer of quartz sand holds no water, and on sunny days the bare ground spikes past 50°C. To live without proper soil, the grass unleashes horizontal runners and deep roots. It partners with special fungi that pull nutrients from windblown sea debris and feed them to the plant, taking a cut of sugar in return.

A few kilometers from the “Martian dunes,” and everything was green again.

Just as I was about to pedal faster, Oksanka called out for me to stop and look back. Sitting on the rear seat, she always has a better view while I’m focused on the road ahead. I turned around and saw a deep, layered panorama where all the silhouettes stacked together.

Dune behind dune behind dune.

Up ahead, I noticed a red cylinder rising against the sky. This was the Groote Kaap, a lighthouse that has shone from the crest since 1985. We climbed the stairs to see the nearby dunes from above.

The third red tower of the trip, and the one we got closest to.

A single path snaked across the pristine land behind the fence, but it seemed less like something human-made and more like a track carved by roaming grazers. The distant sea sparkled so softly against the horizon that it was hard to tell where the water ended and the sky began.

From above, the dunes looked like crumpled brown velvet.

I turned around and looked inland. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen this impossibly flat country from above. The tiny houses sat peacefully below, sheltered from the sea by the gigantic dune wall.

A rare view in the Netherlands: looking down on something.

Petten aan Zee: the Palendorp and the World War II dragon’s teeth

We didn’t expect to see much for the next few kilometers, but we couldn’t miss the Zeetuin, or “Sea Garden” — a yard packed with salvaged maritime gear like buoys and rescue rafts. It turned out to be a private collection, but clearly visible from the elevated cycle path. The marking on the old fishing boat, “RI 85,” registered it to Ringkøbing, Denmark. It had sunk in Den Helder’s port a few years back, only to retire here.

Many Dutchies collect garden gnomes. Someone here took it to another level.

After kilometers locked in the dunes, the path dropped us back at the water’s edge in Petten aan Zee. It took us a moment of searching along the coastline to spot the Palendorp (“Pole Village”), an art installation honoring a medieval village swallowed by the North Sea in 1792 after centuries of brutal storms. 160 wooden poles rise from the sand, following the outlines of the lost houses and the church. A few people strolled between the posts — the phantom streets briefly had residents again.

The tallest poles, I’d guess, marked the church.

Then the dunes changed compared to the ones we’d passed earlier: a water-filled ditch stretched between parallel ridges. Oksanka and I played a guessing game about what it was, and we were both pretty close: a so-called “wet dune slack,” built during the 2014–2015 coastline reinforcement. It gave the Palendorp installation a whole new context: such heavy engineering is why today’s Petten aan Zee hasn’t been swallowed by the sea like its predecessor. They also added a wooden jetty over the newborn wetland for a better view.

On the other side of the dune, kitesurfers were having a very different afternoon.

Next on our list was one of the largest remaining sets of “dragon’s teeth” in the Netherlands, built by the Germans to block a potential Allied tank landing from the sea. First, though, we had to get down off the high dunes onto the lowlands. To our surprise, what looked on the map like a legitimate trail ended abruptly at a flight of stairs and a steep drop our heavy bike couldn’t handle, so we dismounted and picked a diagonal line on foot to make the incline gentler.

The trail was a lie, but the view didn’t disappoint.

The concrete “dragon’s teeth” stretched across a pasture in chevron-shaped rows. A drainage ditch kept them isolated from the road, and a lone black-and-white horse grazed nearby.

Eighty years on, the only vehicle they block is a lawnmower.

The Schoorlse Duinen and the castle ruins of Egmond aan den Hoef

The sun was dropping toward the horizon, cut off more and more often by passing clouds. The light was gradually fading. We thought we’d already seen every variation of dunes, but then we entered the Schoorlse Duinen, named after the nearby village of Schoorl.

The sand ran down the sides like pale lava from a very Dutch “volcano.”

The view kept changing every few hundred meters. Grassy slopes alternated with stands of pine trees and lone bushes. I caught myself constantly composing shots in my head, but I did my best to let go of the viewfinder habit and relax into the scenery.

At over 55 meters, the Schoorlse Duinen are the highest in the country.

At some point, we rode closer to the coast and caught the distinct, iodized smell of the sea. This scent always triggers a memory of my grandmother dabbing iodine solution on my scraped knees when I was a kid. It’s funny to think that what’s really just dying algae and plankton gas in the wind could evoke such a warm childhood memory.

The sand keeps reclaiming the path, nibbling at its edges.

While we were mostly taking in the big picture from our saddles, the textures on the ground kept calling for a closer look. I picked a good spot to stop — both for the view and to save my legs from cramps later that night.

At ankle height, the dunes turn into a tangle of rust and gold.

Oksanka poked me and asked which heather I preferred — the vibrant purple or the dried yellow stalks. Hard to say, but maybe it was just the evening sun doing its work: the dry heather was glowing like gold, looking less like dead plants and more like an ancient treasure in a museum.

A cross-section of heather — like a specimen in a lab.

Even though we were riding at the end of August, September was right around the corner — the month we call “veresen” (вересень) in Ukrainian, named directly after heather, “veres” (верес). Warmer summers have pushed the purple bloom earlier into August; that’s why purple flowers only survived in shaded pockets, while the heather in the open had already dried up.

In the open, the heather had already moved on to September.

The Schoorlse Duinen felt immense — unless we’d unknowingly crossed into a neighboring nature reserve. Either way, the sheer variety of the landscape kept us completely hooked.

Evening light through the pines.

Nature wasn’t all we’d see before sunset — there was still some history waiting for us. I guided the bike out of the forest, steering toward the trio of Egmond villages: Egmond aan den Hoef (“Egmond at the Estate”), Egmond aan Zee (“Egmond at Sea”), and Egmond-Binnen (“Egmond Inland”).

One last patch of heather on our route.

The village referencing the estate was particularly interesting to us because we already knew a bit of its history. Egmond aan den Hoef is tied to the noble House of Egmont, which established its seat here back in the Middle Ages and later helped ignite the Dutch struggle for independence. Oksanka and I listen to many genres of music, from death metal to classical, and we first came across the name through Ludwig van Beethoven’s overture “Egmont.” Now, after hearing that piece for years, we were finally standing at the actual place.

Red and gold for the House of Egmont, on the flag and on the pedestal.

Lamoraal, Count of Egmont, is remembered as a hero of the Dutch resistance against Spanish rule, though he stayed loyal to the king and tried to mediate between the local nobility and the Spanish Crown. His diplomatic gamble backfired catastrophically: in 1567, the Duke of Alba had him arrested, and a year later he was publicly beheaded in Brussels. His execution sparked outrage, becoming one of the catalysts for the Eighty Years’ War.

The last piece of the steward’s tower.

Today, only the foundations, a fragment of brickwork, and a moat remain of Egmont’s castle. Its downfall began in 1573, during the Eighty Years’ War. With the Spanish troops closing in on nearby Alkmaar, the Dutch resorted to a scorched-earth policy, burning the castle to deny the enemy a stronghold. The burned-out shell stood for another two centuries until it was auctioned off for scrap. Demolition crews stripped the walls brick by brick, selling the sturdy medieval masonry to local builders. By the 1830s, the last tower was torn down, except for one stubborn fragment.

Most brickwork you see isn’t at the original height; the foundations were dug out of the sand in the 1930s and rebuilt to just above ground.

From Egmond aan Zee to Assumburg Castle and the IJmuiden sea lock at night

Leaving Count Egmont’s history behind, we turned back toward the coast to Egmond aan Zee for a break and some food. The sea was throwing up steady waves under the sun. We found a place to grab snacks and sit for a bit, watching a single kitesurfer riding the water, and grass trembling in the wind across the slope.

The sun broke through right above the only kite on the water.

Behind our bench stood the snow-white Jan van Speijk Lighthouse. We wondered about its name; it was the only lighthouse we’d seen named after a person. So, in 1831, cornered by Belgian rebels, Dutch Lieutenant Commander Van Speijk blew up his own gunboat rather than surrender. The blast took most of his crew and dozens of Belgian civilians and insurgents on the Antwerp quay.

The camper van has mountains painted on it, parked in one of the flattest countries in the world.

Building a lighthouse apparently wasn’t enough; a Royal Decree made sure the Dutch Navy would always have a ship bearing Van Speijk’s name, currently the seventh such vessel. But what really struck Oksanka and me was how little we knew about the Belgian Revolution. As it turned out, in the post-Napoleonic reshuffle, the Dutch crown got Belgium and quickly slipped into the role of a heavy-handed ruler, imposing language laws, curbing Catholic education, and forcing the Belgians to pay off pre-union Dutch debts. Through that lens, Van Speijk’s sacrifice wasn’t a defense against an aggressor — unlike Count Egmont’s stand — but a desperate act to preserve a crumbling imperial influence.

Sunbeams over the North Sea, as the day started to wind down.

While Oksanka parsed these facts, I steered our bike away from the coast and deeper into the last patch of dunes for the day. That was where we met a group of Highland cows. They were unbothered by us, ambling along the edge of the path as if they knew the traffic rules.

The reserve keeps Highlanders to graze down the shrubs.

Oksanka warned me to keep back, but I was already holding a safe distance. The cattle moved in an unhurried rhythm, ignoring us, and we could study every detail as we passed by: the texture of their coats and the broad curve of their horns.

Both cows and bulls of this breed grow long horns, so there’s no telling which this one is.

The open dunes eventually gave way to a light forest that thrives in the sheltered inner belt of the North Holland Dune Reserve. Suddenly, I caught movement through the trees. My first thought was more Highland cows, so I pointed out the spot to Oksanka. But as we got closer, we realized it was a small herd of free-roaming Exmoor ponies.

Like the Highlanders, the ponies are on duty, grazing to keep the dunes open.

The herd stepped down to the edge of an algae-covered canal for a drink. “Looks like they couldn’t resist the matcha trend either,” Oksanka laughed. Like the cows, the ponies were used to people, though they kept an eye on us the whole time.

Drinks at the canal: two heads down, two on guard.

We soon entered the mundane, built-up area near the North Sea Canal — the village of Velsen-Noord. The sun was sitting on the edge of a thick, low-hanging cloud above the horizon, casting a soft glow over the wind turbines and port cranes. The asphalt of the bike path glinted. We were about to cross to the other side, but both of us wanted to stretch our journey a little longer; we just weren’t sure where to steer next.

A day of dunes ending with wind turbines and chimneys.

Luckily, I remembered that just a few kilometers away stood a castle we could explore this late without a ticket, as it housed a youth hostel. We extended our ride and swung over to check it out. Assumburg Castle dates back to the 15th century, but despite having the moat and towers, it’s an imitation of a stronghold. Its walls were far too thin to survive an actual siege, but just enough for a noble residence.

The battlements are decorative; the only people storming this castle are backpackers.

The castle looked genuinely lived-in. As dusk deepened and stars appeared overhead, the windows lit up in yellow and orange, mimicking candlelight despite the modern electricity inside. Summer or not, the temperature was dropping fast. After a stroll around the castle, Oksanka and I were both glad to pull on some extra layers.

In silhouette, the castle finally looks like the fortress it only pretended to be.

Now the day felt almost complete, and there was no need to look for any more detours. Under the open stars, we rode back for our second attempt to cross the North Sea Canal near Velsen-Noord. The entire reach was ablaze with hundreds of lights from ships and gantry cranes. On the opposite side, cranes were working a freighter, moving methodically up and down.

The whole quay lit up and doubled in the canal.

Even on a Sunday evening, when most people were at home getting ready for the workweek, we weren’t alone. As our eyes adjusted, the silhouettes of fishermen popped up along the water’s edge.

From the dark lock island, the quay looked like a stage with the show still running.

This section of the canal feeds into the IJmuiden Locks, named after the town across the water. Their newest sea lock, opened in 2022, is the longest and widest in the world. We pulled up right in the middle of the lock bridge. A gigantic cruise liner stood at the far end, completely still, giving us a sense of scale. Had it been moving through, who knows how long we would’ve had to wait to cross.

Lit end to end, the chamber stretches 500 meters: a big cruise ship would take up barely two-thirds of it.

Finally, we were on the other side, after a series of sharp turns and crossing four or five bridges over the lock gates. I was a bit tired and simply followed the directions on my navigation app without paying much attention to where it was taking us. To our surprise, the dense patch of woodland just kept going, growing thicker and darker.

A fallow deer buck, caught in the beam.

Then I saw a shadow between the tree trunks — a deer. Oh no! We were riding in the Zuid-Kennemerland National Park. Suddenly the route made sense. It was guiding us straight to the station, but the last thing I wanted was to get caught by a ranger patrol after hours.

The last photo of that day, and the most gothic one.

I snapped a couple of quick pictures for memory, then put my head down and pushed to clear the park boundary without delay. It was one final shot of adrenaline before Oksanka and I arrived at the station and caught our train home.