The Frisian Islands
The four Frisian islands preserve an unexpected sense of wilderness in so populated a country, low-lying sandbanks with mile upon mile of hourglass-fine sandy beaches and well-developed networks of cycleways. A tourist magnet in summertime, busy and developed Terschelling is large enough to swallow the holiday crowds, while car-free Vlieland resembles a grass-covered dunescape and is popular with young families. Both can be reached from Harlingen, while the access point for busy Ameland is the port of Holwerd. The smallest of the four islands is Schiermonnikoog; this can be reached from Leeuwarden and Dokkum, but the shorter route there is from neighbouring Groningen. One way of reaching the islands is by indulging in wadlopen, a hearty walk at low tide across – and often knee-deep in – the mud flats that lie between the islands and the mainland. See here for ways to do this, but don’t attempt it without a qualified guide. The islands have a wide range of accommodation, particularly Terschelling and Ameland, but prices rise dramatically in summer, when vacant rooms can be thin on the ground, and you should also always reserve ahead if you’re visiting in July or August, or indeed at anytime during the summer.
The Oerol Festival
Every year around the middle of June, Terschelling celebrates the beginning of the warmer season with the Oerol Festival (w oerol.nl). Oerol – meaning “everywhere” in the Terschelling dialect – is the name of a rural tradition in which the island’s cattle were released from their winter stables to frolic and graze in the open fields, an event that marked the changing of the seasons. Today, over 50,000 people head out to the island for the Oerol, transforming Terschelling into a big festival area, with the island serving as both inspiration and stage for theatre producers, musicians and graphic artists. Finding accommodation is almost impossible during the ten-day festival, so book ahead.
Wadlopen
Wadlopen, or mud-flat walking, is a popular and strenuous Dutch pastime, and the stretch of coast on the northern edge of the provinces of Friesland and Groningen is one of the best places to do it: twice daily, the receding tide uncovers vast expanses of mud flat beneath the Waddenzee. It is, however, a sport to be taken seriously, and far too dangerous to do without an experienced guide: the depth of the mud is variable and the tides inconsistent. In any case, channels of deep water are left even when the tide has receded, and the currents can be perilous. The timing of treks depends on weather and tidal conditions, but most start between 6am and 10am. It’s important to be properly equipped; recommended gear includes shorts or a bathing suit, a sweater, wind jacket, knee-high socks, high-top trainers and a complete change of clothes stashed in a watertight pack. In recent years, wadlopen has become extremely popular, and as excursions are infrequent, between May and August it’s advisable to book a place at least a month in advance. The VVVs in Leeuwarden, Dokkum and Groningen can provide details, or you could contact one of the wadlopen organizations direct.
Prices and trips vary according to location, and how long (and far) you choose to go. You can do a full trip crossing to one of the islands – Ameland or Schiemonnikoog – and coming back by ferry, or just do a circular trip across the mud flats and back again. Pieterburen is a popular place to start: a circular trip from there costs €16.50 per person, and takes three and a half hours; while a full trip to Schiermonnikoog and back by ferry costs €75 a head.
Groningen
The most exciting city in the northern Netherlands, Groningen comes as something of a surprise in the midst of its namesake province’s quiet, rural surroundings. It’s a hip, rather cosmopolitan place for the most part, with a thriving student life that imbues the city with vim and gusto. Competitively priced restaurants dish up exotic curries and fresh falafel alongside the standard Dutch staples, and the arts scene is particularly vibrant, especially during the academic year. Virtually destroyed during the Allied liberation in 1945, the city focuses on two enormous squares and is now a jumble of styles, from traditional canal-side townhouses to bright Art Deco tilework along the upper facades of the shopping streets – an eclecticism that culminates in the innovative Groninger Museum sitting on its own island near the station. Finally, one of the nice things about Groningen is that the centre is almost car-free, the result of huge investment in traffic-calming measures and a network of cycle paths and bus lanes. Today two-thirds of residents travel regularly by bike, the highest percentage in the country.
Festival Noorderzon
Every year in mid-August, Groningen hosts the increasingly popular Festival Noorderzon (w noorderzon.nl), a ten-day blend of theatre, music, film and performance art. About a third of the events are free, many of them staged in the Noorderplantsoen park, a fifteen minute walk north along Nieuwe Kijk in ’t Jatstraat. Come night-time, food stalls and drinking-holes surround the lake in the park, while folk stroll along the lantern-lit paths or chill on the lake’s stone steps to the sound of Afrobeat, Latin, funk, rock, jazz or ambient music. Other entertainment includes circuses, mime, puppetry, videos and installations. Hotels get busy, so if you’re planning to visit around this time you’d do well to book in advance.
The Groninger Museum
The town’s main draw is the excellent Groninger Museum, set on its own island on the southern edge of the centre, directly across from the train station. Aside from a very cool information lounge with computers and touch screens, the museum is mostly given over to temporary exhibitions and what you see really depends on when you’re here. If you’re lucky, a rare work by the seventeenth-century Dutch painter Carel Fabritius – Man in a Helmet (probably the museum’s most prized possession) – will be on display, or Rubens’ energetic Adoration of the Magi and Isaac Israëls’ inviting Hoedenwinkel from a modest sample of Hague School paintings.
Most people, however, visit as much for the building itself as for what’s inside, which consists of six pavilions, each designed in a highly individual style: think Gaudí on holiday in Miami, and you’ll have some idea of the interior decor. Once inside, between the stylish café and museum shop, the striking mosaic stairwell sweeps downwards, depositing you among bulbous lemon-yellow pillars and pink walls, from where moat-level corridors head off to pavilions either side: east to Mendini, Mendini 1 and Coop Himmelb(l)au, west to Starck and De Ploeg.
De Ploeg and the Starck Pavilion
The museum’s collection includes a number of works by the Expressionists of the Groningen De Ploeg school, housed in their own pavilion, a trapezium constructed from red bricks. The De Ploeg movement is characterized by intense colour contrasts, exaggerated shapes and depiction of landscapes – often of the countryside north of Groningen. As founding member Jan Altink put it: “There wasn’t much going on in the way of art in Groningen, so I thought of cultivation and thus also of ploughing. Hence the name De Ploeg.” As well as Altink, look out for the paintings of Jan Wiegers. Upstairs from De Ploeg, the Philippe Starck pavilion is a giant disc clad in aluminium plating and houses the museum’s wonderful collection of Chinese and Japanese porcelain, beautifully displayed in circular glass cases, softened by gauzy drapes.
The Mendini Pavilions and Coop Himmelb(l)au
On the other side of the mosaic stairway, the Mendini pavilions are dedicated to temporary exhibitions, while a large concrete stairway links Mendini 1 to the final, and most controversial, pavilion. Designed by Wolfgang Prix and Helmut Swiczinsky, who together call themselves Coop Himmelb(l)au, it’s a Deconstructivist experiment: double-plated steel and reinforced glass jut out at awkward angles, and skinny aerial walkways crisscross the exhibition space. It all feels – probably deliberately – half-built. Look out for the glass-walk holes, where the concrete floor stops and suddenly between your feet the canal gapes, two storeys below. This pavilion is also given over to temporary exhibitions.
Liquor fit for a queen?
Although Groningen does not have a rich culinary tradition, the Hooghoudt brewery (w hooghoudt.nl) is known throughout the country and dates back to 1888. It’s best known for its Graanjevener, but they also produce Beerenburg and other liquors like the Wilhelmus Orange Liquor, which is traditionally served on Queen’s Day.
Harlingen
Thirty kilometres west of Leeuwarden and just north of the Afsluitdijk, Harlingen, is a more compelling stop than nearby Franeker. An ancient and salty old port that serves as the ferry terminus for the islands of Terschelling and Vlieland, it’s something of a centre for traditional Dutch sailing barges, a number of which are usually moored in the harbour. It was a naval base from the seventeenth century onwards, and abuts the Vliestroom channel, once the easiest way for shipping to pass from the North Sea through the shallows that surround the Frisian islands and on into the Zuider Zee. Before trade moved west, this was the country’s lifeline, where cereals, fish and other foodstuffs were brought in from the Baltic to feed the expanding Dutch cities, and it was also once a centre for the ceramics industry. Its historic importance is reflected in a fine old centre of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century houses, sandwiched between the pretty Noorderhaven and the more functional Zuiderhaven canals. However, Harlingen is too busy to be a twee tourist town: there’s a fishing fleet, a small container depot and a shipbuilding yard.
Hindeloopen
The exquisitely pretty village of Hindeloopen juts into the IJsselmeer, and is very much on the tour-bus trail. Outside high summer, however, and in the evening when most visitors have gone home, it’s peaceful and very enticing, a tidy jigsaw of old streets, canals and wooden bridges that are almost too twee to be true.
Its attractive church, a seventeenth-century structure with a wonky medieval tower, has some graves of British airmen who perished in the Zuider Zee, while the small village museum beside the church, the Museum Hindeloopen (April–Oct Mon–Fri 11am–5pm, Sat & Sun 1.30–5pm; €3; w museumhindeloopen.nl), displays examples of Hindeloopen’s unusual furniture, although the largest display is at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden.
The painted furniture of Hindeloopen
Until the seventeenth century, Hindeloopen prospered as a Zuider Zee port, concentrating on trade with the Baltic and Amsterdam. The combination of rural isolation and trade created a specific culture within this tightly knit community, with a distinctive dialect (Hylper–Frisian with Scandinavian influences) and sumptuous local dress. Adopting materials imported into Amsterdam by the East India Company, the women of Hindeloopen dressed in a florid combination of colours where dress was a means of personal identification: caps, casques and trinkets indicated marital status and age, and the quality of the print indicated social standing. Other Dutch villages adopted similar practices, but nowhere were the details of social position more precisely drawn. However, the development of dress turned out to be a corollary of prosperity, for the decline of Hindeloopen quite simply finished it off. Similarly, the local painted furniture showed an ornate mixture of Scandinavian and Oriental styles superimposed on traditional Dutch carpentry. Each item was covered from head to toe with painted tendrils and flowers on a red, green or white background, but the town’s decline resulted in the collapse of the craft. Tourism has revived local furniture-making, and countless shops now line the main street selling modern versions, though even the smallest items aren’t cheap, and the florid style is something of an acquired taste.