Terps, borgs and the pink granite coast: Terps

When early man in woolly mammoth skins headed for the sea to fish he needed shelter. He dug around and found peaty mud which he dried in the sun and used to build a house, gathering twigs as a thatch for the roof. When the tides were high or the moons not in alignment the sea rose and washed his clay and twig house away.

He built it again, higher this time, on a little peat brick foundation making a tighter peat brick mound to rest it on, finding the best height to outwit the most violent inundation. Some nights he would sit himself by his wood fire, completely surrounded by wild winds and lashing sea storms but safe and snug inside his wee mound house.

Others came. They, too, built shelter mounds. Learning from mammoth man's mistakes they tucked themselves close and built as high.

Soon a little circle of their separate little houses on separate little mounds grew up out of the backwash of the sea and for a time mammoth man was content.

Slowly he and his neighbours thought to fill in the gaps between their shelters so that one large circular mound developed on which they could all live happily. At the heart of their settlement was the thing most central to their well being: a circular pond or a well of fresh water: stored safely on the highest point of their mound, safe from most salt water invasions. They needed it. Their animals needed it. And little lanes and paths soon radiated from the central pond and major circle route back to their individual shelters.

Soon, at the base of the mound they built even more protection. They dug a canal, like a moat around their mound. Then one thought to design a mechanism to pump the water out of their land and drain it further out to sea. Slowly their settlement was becoming even more secure.

After harsh years they pondered the problem of building even better barriers and came up with the idea of a dike construction, surrounding everything, high enough to stop the biggest sea they had ever experienced. So they set to work building a dike and found they were safe behind it as they had never been before.

Soon Christian missionaries came and urged them to build a church in their community. There had been no floods since they built their strong dike so they were happy to do away with their freshwater pond at the heart of the mound, happy to build the village a church.

This type of construction is called a terp: a house on a mound; a church on a mound; even an entire village on a mound.

And this is how Niehove, a tiny village that was once surrounded by water, now finds itself on all sides looking out upon beautiful pasture land, all reclaimed for miles around.

Today it sits as a perfect example of a terp: a charming little village with an 18th century church at its heart. The church is raised on a mound even higher than the rest of the village, a sign of its importance.

Its circular road radiates from the central locus of the church at the top of the mound. Around that road is a collection of charming little brick houses -- once they would have been mud brick and thatch. Between the houses are little paths and lanes that were first built to carry the water from the village pond when they needed it.

These lanes radiate down a gentle terp slope to the watermill (molen): there, to this day, to do whatever pumping job the villagers might need.

Barns radiate into wider wedges of fields from the backs of the houses. Fields radiate into even wider wedges.

Today, Niehove is almost a classic textbook example of how a mammoth man village has evolved into the 21st century.

Another, quite similar and equally charming village, is Esinge. Not as structurally classical as Niehove, but still, typical. The Esinge terp was heavily excavated in the 1930s and the museum there is full of artefacts found in graves, barns and farmhouses in the village: early combs, cooking bowls and platters, jewellery and tools. Giving a vivid impression of the very real and hard-working community of people who lived there.

One of these who was born just a village or two away in the 1600's, in Lutjegast, was Abel Tasman, who discovered New Zealand, and after whom Tasmania was named. In Lutjegast, in a tiny green patch in a back street, we found a small monument to Tasman, showing the figure of a visionary sea man looking out over water and sea, with an entry from his log book inscribed on a tablet nearby. Very fitting.

The deciduous trees around these villages are bare still, wearing their winter garb. We see shoots on some trees which just need sun to sprout, but it is not clear to us if the sun ever shines this far north in the Netherlands.

Today we have seen rain most of the morning. And in this chill that sort of precipitation is not far from snow. Only the hardiest of cyclists brave the bike tracks today. Walkers have stayed indoors. Wood fires which we saw decades ago seem all to have died out. Central heating must be the go now, as there are few chimneys in evidence, and no chimney smoke at all.

We have seen only one raincoat in use, but we notice that the men are more likely to wear a moisture proof jacket to ward off the rain; while the girls still choose cold weather gear of faux fashion fur and absorbent wool rather than selecting something waterproof. They rarely even cover their hair.

We finished the afternoon in Zoutcamp, another pretty fishing village with a picturesque canal , that was once on a salt water sea which has been diked and is now a freshwater lake. Here, too, there is a smokehouse for the freshwater eel the local fishermen catch.

For five minutes the sun came out late this afternoon and it felt like a cue for the start of a Flash Mob moment that you see on You Tube: house doors were flung open and shutters and doors were meticulously wiped down, people popped into their gardens with pruning shears; basket-weave chairs vacant all day in the boulevard cafes were suddenly filled with people demanding coffee or Heineken.

Tonight, as we are about to start preparing supper great shards of hail are stabbing our camper, with surely enough force to pit it.

I have no comprehension why mammoth man, who spent so much of his precious time working hard to keep himself and his family warm and dry simply did not give up and so the sensible thing: simply head south.

Where there be sun.