One of my goals for 2016 is to visit at least six National Parks in the Netherlands. Zuid-Kennemerland is the first of the six I’m visiting this year.

Zuid-Kennemerland NP

The National Park is located in the province North-Holland, west of the city Haarlem, within the municipalities of Bloemendaal, Velsen and Zandvoort. The area is characterized by its sand dunes, but there are also forests and estates (and a camping) in the park.

I won’t mention what kind of flowers you can find in the park as that’s usually not my main focus. Animals are more in my ballpark. I’ve managed to embarrass myself a little bit in front of my colleagues, let me share this story here as well so I can embarrass myself a bit further.

Before I visited the park, I read what kind of animals I could find there. I found out there is a super rare breed of European bison, called wisent. Needless to say when I visited the park and I found the “bisons” after half an hour. I was over the moon. Especially, since there were many of them and they were staying so close to the path.

Turns out what I spotted wasn’t a wisent at all. They were Highland Coos. Remember how I used to live in Scotland for three years? How could I not have known?

Anyways, long story short: I didn’t spot wisents as I thought I had (google them to see how different they look), instead I had seen Highland Coos and my colleagues had to point this out to me…

30 van Zandvoort

I visited this National Park as part of an organized event called the “30 van Zandvoort”. During this event you can choose either the 30 km route or the 18 km route, I’m not a seasoned hiker (yet) so I chose the shorter one.

This was my first time participating in such an event and it didn’t disappoint. I liked walking by myself along the masses to reach the goal, while country music was playing on my ipod to keep me going.

The 18 km hike took me 3 hours and 37 mins. Keep in my that The Netherlands are pretty flat so there are no hills to battle, apart from the occasional sand dune. I started at 9:00am and finished at 12:45pm. I did this walk in March, so as expected, the weather wasn’t great. It was overcast most of the time, but luckily it rained only for a few minutes. Enough stats, let’s move on to the actual route.

Zandvoort

The start of the route was in Zandvoort, more specifically at the Circuit Park, which is also where I parked my car.

Beach

Once we had left Zandvoort, we could choose to either take the boardwalk or to walk on the beach. Obviously, I chose the beach which the weather gods didn’t seem to like as that was the moment it started raining.

It’s actually possible to walk from Hoek van Holland (the town where I live) all the way to Zandvoort/Bloemendaal Aan Zee over the beach. That’s something I’ve never tried before though. I have to start training my walking muscles a bit as these 18 km already left me a bit sore.

You only succeed if your stamp book is filled with all the stamps from the route. This is not a daunting task as the posts are easy to find and everyone is headed in the same direction. The first stamp post was in Bloemendaal Aan Zee, a town famous for its beach bars (in summer though…).

After the first stamp we walked a few more kms by the sea, until it was time for the 18 km people to say goodbye to the 30 km people. Their walk would continue over the beach and ours would take us to Zuid-Kennemerland National Park.

Highland Cows

The Highland Cows deserve their own header since they were so prevalent in the area. There were brown, black and white highland cows as far as the eye could see at the start of dunes. Most people kept their pace and continued striding on towards the end, while I took my camera and shot numerous pictures of the cows.

Bird Lake

Along the route there was also a stop near a bird lake. I’m not sure which birds I was supposed to see here, but the lake is a very tranquil and peaceful area worth a visit. It would be a lovely area for a picnic for example.

Forest & Camping

The environment changed a bit when we reached a forest…

.. But it changed drastically when we reached the camping.

Back to Zandvoort

To be honest, when we passed the camping the route became more boring. The “wisenten” (highland cows…) were my highlight, the lake was pretty and the forest was a nice change of scenery, but when we reached the camping the environment became repetitive. It really felt like the-way-back rather than a nice walk. When it starts feeling like that it takes so long before you actually get back.

The area we walked through was bit of a blur to me and I stopped paying attention. My only goal was to reach the finish.

Finish

Which I did around 12:45pm! As I said before I never participated in events like this, or completed walks of this magnitude so I couldn’t have possibly predicted the way it would feel to complete it. Let me tell you: it feels good!

Especially holding the medal is amazing!

Conclusion

I will definitely participate in more of these events. They’re a great way to explore the scenery while also trying to complete something. In fact, a few weeks later I walked the “Bloesemroute” more about that walk in the next post!