Dutch Bunkers, a Lighthouse and ... An Egg - Exploring The Netherlands

 

 

Sunset over our Marina 

The Netherlands, we’re back! This time we’re not here to sail but to explore and get a few little jobs done on the boat.

 

Since we bought Albatros last year, Matt has been dyeing to get his teeth sunk into rewiring the electrics cupboard.  This trip was his chance to do just that! The cupboard was such a mess with extensions of cable all shoved together in a tangle of wire.  Now it’s all nice and neat and we can clearly see what does what.

Before - behind the electric cupboard

After - so much neater!

After a day on the boat in windy conditions we thought it best to go and see what the area around us had to offer.  We’ve never had the chance to go to the north island near us.  There’s always been too much to do and we’ve ran out of time, but this week we got the chance.

 

There’s quite a lot to see and do on the island of Goeree – Overflakkee but not many towns or villages.  We first went to see what is claimed to be the best bird observatory in The Netherlands, Vogelobservatorium 'Tij' Haringvliet.  The path here gets flooded at high tide, so its defiantly a must to check the tide times unless you don’t mind wading through the sea in your wellies.  Dogs are not allowed as they may scare the wildlife, and the website suggests you should be quiet as you walk to the observatory, again to not scare the wildlife. 

Observatory modelled on a Sandwich Tern egg

When you approach the hide, there is a shingle path and a covered space which is pitch black! From here, you can see the observatory in all its glory.  This is probably the only place you can see it from the outside (unless you’re on the water!) As we approached, it was quite stunning, the architecture of the building was well thought out and was designed to look like a Sandwich Tern egg as there are many colonies of these sea birds in the area.  This structure is made up for 460 pieces of individual wood and measures 11 metres long by 8 metres high.  It is completely covered in thatch, so it fits in with the surroundings of the reeds and marshes that surround it.

Inside the observatory, what a spectacular place

From the observatory, we went west of the island to a small town of Ouddorp. This town was very quiet and due to the time of year, a lot of places were shut.  I can defiantly see this place being busy in the summer, but this time, we grabbed some lunch from a supermarket and headed to De Punt, which houses some of the best preserved World War 2 bunkers in the country. 

 

We found the starting point which was a little hidden and there is no real car park here, we just parked on the side of the road.  Again, this is somewhere that would be so busy in the summer, so I’m glad we’re visiting when its quiet.  We walked along the track and up the hill to a T junction, where we saw another sign for the bunkers.  There were no arrows telling us where to go, so we went straight on.  This was the wrong way!! We walked a 2 mile round route that took us back to the car!! We ummed and ahhed about whether to go and see these bunkers when we were back at the car.  Having seen the amazing ones in Normandie last week, we thought these ones wouldn’t live up to our expectations. But we persevered, walked back up the path to the T junction, this time turning Left!!

One of the many bunkers we were able to see, buried in the sand dunes

We are very glad we decided to continue and try again. There’s a total of 15 bunkers all sign posted with great information about them, what they were used for, why there were there etc.  There were also a couple that have been purposely closed off as colonies of bats now live in them and they shouldn’t be disturbed.  We walked around looking at living quarters, garages, gun mounts and we even found the toilet! The toilet was a reinforced underground building with walls that were 2 metres thick.  Each of the buildings that were bomb proof had the letters ST at their entrances, so did the toilets.  

 

These bunkers have been excavated and restored by a team of volunteers.  There are 300 in the area and so far, they have only recovered 15. The bunkers were all submerged by sand following a bad storm in the late 1940’s and covered in dunes and bracken.  The plan is to keep going and excavate more over time.

 

From the bunkers, we headed across the coast to West Head Lighthouse.  There has been a lighthouse on this site for 470 years.  The original one was destroyed in 1911 when the first ever reinforced concrete lighthouse was built in the country.  This was then destroyed by German occupiers with explosives.  The current lighthouse was rebuilt again and was first lit in 1950 with an antenna being added in 1989 and being restored again in 2018 to what we see now.  

It was really foggy when we went, so I've taken this picture from Google

Next week we are back at home in France, but we can’t wait to see what else The Netherlands has to offer when we’re back.

If you want to see more of this area, check out our YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJvtPZ1-Jek&t=1s 

 

What 3 Words 

Vogelobservatorium 'Tij' Haringvliet (the Bird Observatory)  Carpark - ///alphabet.horoscope.fondest & The observatory  ///anglers.illustrates.summit

Ouddorp  ///works.allegation.frontal

De Punt (Bunkers)  ///webpage.kipper.disqualify

West Head Lighthouse Parking - ///poppet.embedding.sharpener the Lighthouse itself – ///fights.earphone.atrium

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