Terps - saved from the sea

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. 

Early Terp Builder 

Model of Terp Village in Esinge museum

A sturdy comb for a terp villager

Abel Jansen Tasmen monument in Lutjegast 

Even the trees look cold 

Zoutcamp canal 

Shrimp boats moored in Zootcamp 

Old salts and sinful delicacies

We drove from North Holland across the massive dike, the Afsluitdijk, entering Friesland.

This is the dyke that has turned a salt water sea into an inland freshwater lake.

Once we cross we immediately feel that we are leaving the more heavily populated regions behind us. No more do we have to watch every twist and turn for cyclists, walkers, cars or lorries, it seems. There is suddenly room for us on the road.

The Netherlands is one of the top three most densely populated countries in Europe and in the south the towns and villages almost seem to merge. No sooner are you through one minefield of a town than you enter another. They all have incredibly narrow roads with bicycle paths to one or both sides and often a canal to the side of that. There barely seems enough space for two cars to pass on most of the roads we drive, but somehow, they do.

In Friesland, the roads seem wider immediately. Even little footbridges are brilliantly designed. The houses seem larger, and there are more detached homes appearing. But it is the farmhouses, here, that are the most startling.

Many are of the kop-hals-romp style, where the kop is the head and contains the house; the hals is the neck and the linking section, while the romp is the barn where the animals spend icy winters. There are other farmhouses of the stelp type, shaped a bit like a pyramid. Their roofs are sometimes tiled at the front, but the larger portion at the rear often has a layer of thin tightly woven thatch.

All are massive.

The square kilometres of glasshouses growing vegetables, fruit and tulips in the south have given way to vast expanses of flat land where hay is being harvested and fat Friesen cattle dot the landscape along with herds of wooly sheep butting their new wobbly-legged lambs.

Walkers are out today in their big thick coats, high boots and scarves tied neck high. On ice cold Mondays shop owners in the Friesland region stay in bed, or rest beside their cosy log fire. They wisely don't open their shops until well after lunch.

We notice many little police cars driving all roads in the Netherlands. They seem always to be behind us just as we're a few kilometres along from a stop and just as Peter is still pulling up his seatbelt. Furtively.

Our preferred lunch spots are canal side and today we found a good one to eat our salami and cheese on caraway and pumpkin seed buns. But we're having a hassle finding a consistent lunch bread we love. In France, almost any french stick is brilliant. Here, sticks are not so common. Bakeries are few and far between compared with France. Rolls tend to come pre-packaged and end up tasting a little dry or a lot doughy, while all the sliced bread we've bought so far seems a bit too airy. We tend to rate the bread daily and French sticks are still our favourite if we can find them.

In Friesland, the villages we've been visiting are smaller and the supermarkets are of the formula variety, like Lidl. Fruit and vegetables also come pre packaged which can be a problem for us. 

Tonight, for example, it is so cold we were hoping for a hot stew, but all the carrots in the shelves come in packages too large for just one or two meals. We want one carrot only, and one is nowhere to be found. Nor can we find just one turnip, or one little swede. So, we've had to settle for a package of mixed frozen vegetables, just to get the variety. Trouble is frozen ones don't usually have that lovely fresh flavour or crunchy texture.

Our two favourite stops today were Hindeloopen and Sloten.

Hinderloopen is a wee Venice with tiny canals that drain into the big inland lake, the Ijsselmeer, that was once a salt water sea. This is an old seafarer's town, and many a captain's house with an interesting facade, is still standing.

Some of the old salts spent their day today chatting on a bench seat that backed on to the lock keepers cottage. Out of the wind.

We were told by one of the locals that there is only one professional sea captain left here. He often sells eel from the lake to the restaurateurs and we found his smoke house further down the street, angling off the back of his sea captain's shanty, all black, and shiny, and prettily decorated.

We drove into woodlands further towards Sloten. And plateaus of sand, called gaasts, spread higher than the rest of the canals and fields. The gaasts were left behind as the Ice Age withdrew and some we saw today were being mined for sand.

Canal boats, disconcertingly, appear to sail in the flat green fields. It takes a moment to realise that the canal is so much lower than the land and can't be seen from the road.

Sloten is a pretty postcard village with an octagonal windmill at one end and two rows of gabled houses facing a canal lined with tall topiary trees pruned down to their nubs and nobbly bumps.

Here we tried our first appelbollen, a sinfully delicious doughnut filled with apple and dredged in a thick coating of icing sugar.

We keep finding foods here that are criminally addictive.

No wonder the locals walk, cycle and run so regularly and with such fierce intent. They want to make calorie space for one more appelbollen, I do believe.

Afsluitdijk, long long dike road from Nth Hollland to Friesland

A footbridge that is a work of engineering and architectural art 

Kop-hals-romp farmhouse 

Eel smokehouse in Hinderloopen

Stepped gables in Sloten

Map of the dike works

Golden age, golden day

Starting in the 17th century, tall ships loaded with spices from Batavia moored in the still waters of the Zuiderzee, near Hoorn and unloaded their cargo. This went on until corruption and strife disintegrated the Dutch East Indies Company and trade fell to pieces. But for nearly two hundred years cinnamon and pepper, nutmeg and cloves were unloaded and weighed at Hoorn docks, helping to turn the Netherlands into the top world trading power at the time. 

This was the Netherlands Golden Age. No country had it so good. 

The Dutch were the ones with the fast tall ships that outran the pirates and brought home the spices. 

Today, the Zuiderzee is no more. An extraordinarily long dike, the Afsluitdijk, has been built joining North Holland to Friesland closing off the sea and the salt water. That sea is now a lake, and just today, I was told by a lady in a restaurant that most of that lake is now freshwater. Even the old salt sea is no more. And even that lake has again been halved with yet another long dike, further down in the lake, enclosing the waters that slosh around Hoorn where the tall ships of the Dutch East Indies once moored. 

The new lake is called the Markemeer. 

Tall ships still sail in the Markemeer. 

We chanced to drive along the top of the land dike, a track leading from the ancient seafaring town of Hoorn with its fine buildings that still reflect its rich historic past. We were high up, looking down on this new lake, which has only come into being early this century. The route took us east to the pretty port town of Enkhuizen and we could not take our eyes off the sea traffic. 

You don't have to imagine a flotilla of tall masts entering the waters; they are there even now. 

The track is barely two metres wide: the blue blue of the lake is on one side; tulip fields in red, gold and white are on the other, or fat cows. The track is mainly for walkers and cyclists. Few cars travel there, but we did. 

The sun was shining. 

The tall ships had their sails unfurled. 

It was the Dutch East India company laden with their richly scented cargo of spices from the south. 

It was a golden day. 

Tall ships sailing still

Narrow dike road from Hoorn to Enkhuizen

Bucolic scenery from the dike road

Windmills, water and wood

Heading slowly north we came to Zaanse Shanz, a brilliant reconstructed historical folk village and museum with a series of working windmills on a picturesque canal, drying chalk, squeezing oils, honey and mustard and pumping water, as we watched.

Historical traditional homes had been moved here from all parts of the Netherlands, many clothed in wood. They needed to be light to stand on top of the earth that was essentially soft, sinking peat. Had they been stone they would likely have sunk. Typically, they are painted a shiny green and many on the site have ornamental gables and facades picked out in black and white. Folksy and charming.

Here, we spent time in a Klompen (clog) factory watching demonstrations of how clogs are made and we saw Albert Heijn's first store, and found folk tales and traditional information dotting the site aplenty. An excellent site.

We had lunch at a very ugly place, Wyck aan Zee, on top of a massive wave of sand dunes that kept the sea from the land. The highest of these rose to about 20 metres above sea level. We parked overlooking a sandy beach that stretched for miles on the sea side but as we looked landwards there lay a huge monster of a steel factory belching white smoke out of a cluster of a dozen fuming chimneys.

Question then is: is smoke that thick and white that spews over the countryside any less a pollutant than thick, dark smoke?

Question: The water is ice blue. Layers of waves roll in looking ice white. The sand is golden and bare: not even a footprint. The wind today is frigid, ripping straight off the top of an Arctic ice floe. If this is May, when can anyone ever swim here? And if ever they could, would they want to with a monster breathing heavily at their backs?

We headed then to Jisp, which long ago was a whaling village, but now seems too far inland to have made that even possible. Here, 17th century biscuit makers lived in the front part of little houses made of wood that sit lightly on this landscape surrounded everywhere by water. Their ovens were built to fit into the back of the house. They moulded their dough, shaped and baked it, then took the biscuits they made by lake and canal to sell in the Amsterdam markets.

On then to Beemster, which now is a delightful village, but four hundred years ago was a lake. A smart engineer in the early decades of the 1600's dreamed up a way to claw back land from the sea. He drained the lake on and off for about three years using some forty drainage mills pumping the water over the top of a dike into a ring canal, and from there, draining the excess water away.

In doing so he created the Netherland's very first polder: a fertile tract of dry land rescued from the sea, and on that polder local folk started to lay bricks, and today many of their homes still survive, straight out of the pages of a 17th century how-to book on architecture. So unusual is Beemster that it has been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Question: Why do four hundred year old Dutch homes look like they were built yesterday? Even the mortar looks fresh, clean and new. In England homes of this age would be held up with strengthening iron cross bars for support; be twisted with age into crooked little houses that creak if you look at them: nothing at all so neat, or trim, or all in a pretty row.

A local Beemster resident saw us wandering her town, came up to us, interrupting her own busy day to give us a long and incredibly interesting talk about the polder. This year marks the 400 year birthday celebration of the town's beginnings and the locals are proud of their beautiful town. They have posted illustrated information boards over important sites and have decorated it with streamers and banners. The town attracts tourists and the locals volunteer to offer them information. Along with tourism the town makes money from its cheeses: today the polder region produces some of the finest cheeses made in the Netherlands.

She told us Beemster lies 4 metres below sea level, yet it has never once flooded in her lifetime.

And she is not scared.

She trusts the dikes that protect her home, her town, and her livelihood.

Working windmills at Zaanse Shanz

Traditional folk houses in shiny green paint

Klompen (clog) factory Zaanse Shans

Steel factory beside an amazingly beautiful beach

Ancient horse shoeing stall in Beemster

Lovely Leiden

In olden times when there were few roads and where two rivers met small boats tended to gather; the occupants would bump alongside each other and chat. 

Sometimes as they chatted someone would pass around a platter of food. So produce became important at these gatherings. As other boats moored there was more to share. Soon produce was being bought and sold from the boats. 

A river market, on board these boats, grew into existence. 

A weighing station just to the side of the canal was eventually built and produce from the boats was weighed out and sold to passersby. No traditional market square seemed needed, and thus the pretty canal market town of Leiden came into existence.

Over time the market folk built houses along the canal and the town grew and bustled around the waterways. A town that stoically withstood a long term siege from invading Spanish for such a long time that William of Orange, as thanks to the community, offered the townsfolk of Leiden either a university or a reduction in taxes. 

They chose the university. Then over more time Leiden became home to those who valued liberal thinking and freedom. Religious pilgrims such as the English Puritans under John Robinson in the 15th Century found a safe haven in Leiden. These same puritans, thirty seven of them, eventually set sail on the Mayflower against all odds to found a new home on new shores in a New World, taking many Dutch notions with them: such as Dutch ideas about celebrations that eventually were incorporated into a harvest festival to become Thanksgiving; along with the singularly Dutch invention: civil marriage. 

Today, university students give Leiden an appealing energy. They cycle to tutorials along the canal streets with their cloth knapsacks holding textbooks and papers, or chat intensely in small clusters in cafes on the cobbles overlooked by charming homes, some dating as far back as the 16th century with their collection of fascinating gables that arch or swirl or curl with decoration. 

These gables were built as facades to disguise the steeply pitched roofs behind which lie useful storage space. So high are some of these that owners of canal houses often built the top of their three floor homes with the top floor leaning forwards, to help prevent winched loads of supplies heading for the attic from banging into the floors beneath. 

Little crooked houses, so charming still.

Canal cafe in Leiden

Steeply pitched roofs

Puritans from Leiden founded the New World

Floating life in Leiden

A university city with atmosphere

A university city with atmosphere

Small and perfectly formed

Our last day in Den Haag was topped off with a trip to Madurodam, a village of models depicting the Netherlands, incorporating many of the engineering wonders around the country, such as the Deltaworks protection barrier; an excellent cross section of the infrastructure that keeps the Netherlands moving, such as Schipol airport and the massive port at Rotterdam; along with models of great public buildings and smaller humbler villages on polders, drained by windmills, all set in their unique and typically Dutch locations.

This turned out to be a really extensive display that was very accessible, understandable for kids, who were having a ball with the interactive elements of the exhibits. Mind you, their fathers were equally involved, so the whole site screamed toys for the boys. A shame that the graphic and interactive elements were not multi-lingual though, as so many of the tourists were not able to decipher the Dutch, and likely missed out on a lot that what was meant to be conveyed. 

The tourists were so thick on the ground that at times it was hard to move, which gave rise to the sudden realisation that this was the first time we had encountered anything like that number of tourists at any time and in any one place in Den Haag. 

Moving around this small city you don't get an impression that this is a tourist city at its heart. There are not a heck of a lot of specific tourist attractions for a start. Its function is governmental and it has an air about it that Canberra has: a focus. Its tidy buildings and upright demeanour make it feel a little bit stately and possibly even a little bit staid. Tho' I think this would be more so in the dreary winter than on a sunny day.

After a lovely lunch at a suburban cafe we headed out to the Japanese Gardens on the massive Clingendael estate once owned by Lady Daisy, a wealthy local, who personally travelled to Japan on many occasions to acquire the ideas and art she wanted to display in her version of a Japanese garden. 

She brought back plants, pretty pagodas, delicate bamboo water features, along with lanterns and statuary that now decorate the park. The garden is small, fragile and gorgeous. It has twisting little paths around tightly mossed garden beds which edge the pond and streamlets. You follow these over finely arched red painted bridges. There is a peaceful pavilion for contemplation, shoji screens for privacy, and slatted windows that cry out for a camera to come into view. 

Small and perfectly formed: this was one of my absolute favourite things to do in the entire city.

Madurodam model 

Stately Den Haag

Pavilion with arched red bridge

Lovely from anywhere

Colours only alive for six weeks

Let there be dikes

After a morning coffee with the boys (and more tasty stroop wafels, the most delicious thin delicate layered biscuit that erupts in your mouth leaving a sweet line of liquid caramel on your tongue) we headed off with Rene at the wheel to spend the day learning about some of the Deltaworks water projects that have become really fascinating to us as we follow how the Netherlands stays afloat when invading oceans, threatening storm surges, and continental drift continually threatens to flood this low flat country living on the edge of a continent that is forever being clawed out of the clutches of the sea.

We drove by fields filled with glasshouses for growing fruits, vegetables and flowers. In this climate glasshouses are easier to control than planting in the ground. 

Our first stop for the day was the great Maeslantkering storm surge gates near where we landed in the ferry at the Hook of Holland. These massive man-made gates, white powder coated steel, arc into place, automatically controlled by computers. Once a critical level of storm surge is reached these two white gates swing on their separate pivots, and slowly close against the weight of heavy water incoming from the sea. They drop to the sea floor, buffering any life-threatening water surge that may attempt to invade the low lands behind them. 

Four million Netherlanders depend on this working. They live behind and below these gates and the accompanying sand dunes that stand like giant Lilliputian barriers against the might of the ocean. 

One tiny failure --a computer that does not react soon enough, a dike that gives way before the gates can be lowered -- and over four million lives are at risk in this tiny country, as most live on land that lies below sea level. They all rely on the gates, the dunes and the dykes for protection.

So they need lots of young Hans Brinker lads with their minds on the job and their fingers at the ready to stem the flow of water. 

And, in the afternoon we met one. 

A friend and colleague of Rene's met with us after a spectacular lunch of smoked eel spiked with lemon accompanied by salad and eaten with toast at the fantastic Scheveningen fish market restaurant, Simonis. Clearly, by the crowds there, this is a famous local fish hangout. Drool. This simple wonderful meal had flavours fit for a king. 

After which we took a walk to see the beach cafes set up solely for the summer along the Scheneningen shorefront, which is being newly developed in front of high sand dunes that hold back the sea. These simulate stylish and more permanent restaurants. Fully laid out and equipped with expensive kitchens and chefs. But they are only temporary. Here today, gone tomorrow. 

We had coffee at the delightful Boonooroonoo's, warmed by heaters on this cold spring day, but decorated in gorgeous statuary, plants and smart soft furnishings: an amazing expense for just for a few months in the summer. I had to keep reminding myself that at the beginning of autumn the entire shebang is packaged into the Dutch equivalent of a Melco box and stored till the same time next year. I cannot get over the expense and the energy expended in setting it all up, and the risk. This year is a cold one. Hopefully all this effort and new employment will pay off. But, in the early weeks of May, which is usually good tourist season time, we were the only ones being served. 

Koen, Rene's friend, laid on a full graphic talk and tour of another stage in the Deltaworks project that he manages: the Sand Engine along the Kijkduin beach. Millions of tons of sand from 12 kilometres out to sea have been dredged and pumped half way between the Hook of Holland and Scheveningen Harbour, laid out on the ocean floor in a sand lump that rises in parts over 8 metres above sea level. This lump of newly laid sand is an experimental piece of work, to see if the ocean tides and currents will gradually disperse all the new sand, like an engine, along this more weakly protected stretch of the coast where the existing dunes might be improved with another layer of mighty fortification on the beach.

Such is life in the Netherlands. The struggle reminds me of battle-hardened medieval knights in a constant test of will against ever invading enemies who just never give up.

After the illustrated model and lots of talk and questions, we walked along the beach to see the sand engine in action. The new and huge swirl of sand loops out from the beach into the ocean and has grown an eco-lagoon at one side. This is good. It acts as a protective environment for shells and sea life. 

Worryingly, the mass of new sand is moving quicker up the coast than anticipated, causing water around the bulk of it to move faster and more dangerously. Local residents are complaining that the outgoing tides sucks too fast near the beach: they fear someone will be caught in a rapidly moving rip, dragged out to sea, and die. So, Koen and his colleagues have put a stop to swimming here, for now; tho' kite-surfers were having a wild old time as the wind blew while we were there. 

From the Sand Engine we headed back to town (again a short trip on a quick bus from the boys' apartment) to Garoeda, an authentically decorated Indonesian restaurant in the heart of town where we indulged in the most delicious rijsttafel (Indonesian rice table) : with dozens of different and delicious dishes straight out of an Indonesian Colonial banquet feast: three different colourful rices, nuts, whole and smashed with added spices, hot spiced meats that fell from a fork, skewered satays and dishes of tangy pickles that stung sharp on the tongue. A taste of history. 

We made it back to our beds for the night, replete, with barely seven minutes to spare before our eleven o'clock curfew: at that time the gates of the campsite would have been closed against us. But we made it. Such a wonderful day!

Glass houses occupying most of the fields of southern Holland

Giant powder coated Mechano, the Maeslantkering storm surge gates

Model of one of the Maeslantkering gates, from Madurodam

Smoked eel, heaven on a plate

Beach cafe, here for the summer, gone for the winter

Rijstaffel, an Indonesian feast