Beach access Callantsoog: 140 metres of concrete from the Dorpsplein to the sand

Officially this access is called Strandslag 12, Dorpsplein. OpenStreetMap also lists it under the name Strandslag Callantsoog, and that matches how the village works: this is the access you walk straight to from the square. It is a concrete ramp, and no car is allowed on it. Gemeente Schagen is brief about that: “Strandslagen are only accessible to pedestrians, cyclists and holders of an exemption.”

A strandslag is a numbered access through the dunes. The numbers run along the whole coast, they stand on the signs and the emergency services work with them, so the number is what you pass on when something happens.

Callantsoog has five accesses: 9 (Voordijk), 10 (Abbestee), 11 (Seinpost), 12 (Dorpsplein) and 13 (Kiefteglop). This page is about number 12.

Where can you park?

Around the Dorpsplein, and that is immediately the catch. The spaces closest to the access are exactly the spaces with the blue zone: parking disc compulsory, one hour maximum. For picking up a coffee that is fine, for an afternoon on the beach it is not. For a longer day, drive one street further into the village or to one of the car parks at the other accesses, where no disc is needed.

How many spaces belong to this access, we have not been able to find out. Gemeente Schagen publishes no numbers per car park, and the counts on tourist sites and in OpenStreetMap carry no source. So we do not name them.

What does parking cost in Callantsoog?

Nothing. Gemeente Schagen has no paid parking for Callantsoog: on its parking page the village appears only under the blue zone, and about that zone it writes word for word that parking in a blue zone is free. So there is no hourly rate to name, and we have not found one either. Checked on 6 September 2026 with the gemeente Schagen.

That is the practical difference with the coast further south. In the gemeente Bergen, which covers Camperduin, Hargen aan Zee, Schoorl aan Zee, Bergen aan Zee and Egmond aan Zee, you pay 2.45 euros per hour. Petten, Sint Maartenszee and Callantsoog fall under Schagen, and those rates do not apply there. So do not carry them into your sums if you are driving from south to north.

The blue zone applies every day from 1 April to 31 October inclusive, from 9.00 to 19.00, with a maximum of one hour. From 1 November to 1 April the disc does not have to go behind the windscreen. Which bays lie in the zone exactly, the municipality does not name by street; it writes only that a number of parking spaces in Schagen and Callantsoog lie in a blue zone. Go by the blue stripe on the road surface and by the signs.

How far do you walk to the beach?

About 140 metres over concrete. That is the length of the beach access itself, measured on the geometry of OpenStreetMap, from the point where it starts at the Dorpsplein to where the surfacing stops at the sand. If you park further along the square, add up to a good ninety metres to that.

It does not end there, because the beach is wide. From the end of the surfacing to the shoreline there is, according to that same map, another 75 metres or so of sand, and more at low tide. So for the water’s edge reckon on a quarter of an hour there and back rather than two minutes.

How steeply the access climbs over the dune, we have not been able to establish. For Kiefteglop, the southernmost access, village sources warn explicitly about a stiff climb. Whether it is the same here, we do not know.

May the dog run off the lead here?

In season, no. From 1 April to 1 October your dog must be on a lead between 9.00 and 19.00 on the beach and on the paths leading to it, on a lead of no more than 1.5 metres. Outside those hours and outside that period the municipality names no lead requirement on the beach. Checked on 6 September 2026 with the gemeente Schagen.

The municipality designates four stretches of beach where the dog may run off the lead all year, whatever the date and the time: between strandpaal 8,100 and 9,400, between 10,500 and 11,100, between 14,500 and 17,100 and between 18,400 and 20,000. A strandpaal is a numbered beach post: the posts stand at fixed intervals along the whole Dutch coast, the signs refer to them and the emergency services use them to fix a position. None of those four stretches begins at this access. The one to the south, from 14,500, lies beyond access 13 and coincides with the naturist beach as well.

Which beach post number belongs to access 12 exactly, we have not been able to pin down at any official source, and the municipality publishes no map with those numbers. So if you are walking with a dog that has to be able to run free, do not go on our word but on the signs at the access.

Note too that the regime of the gemeente Bergen does not apply here. There the dog may run off the lead all day from 1 October to 1 May, and yellow and orange post caps apply. Schagen works with different dates and with beach post numbers.

How do you get here without a car?

By bus to right by the access. The Zeeweg stop lies about 110 metres from the seaward end of the access, and two lines stop there: line 152 of Connexxion between Schagen station and Callantsoog Stuyvezandeweg, and line 851, the Kustbus, between Den Helder station and Petten Plein 1945. How often line 152 runs, we have not been able to check with the operator itself; look it up in the journey planner before you are standing waiting for the way back.

The Kustbus is a summer service and does not run all year. In 2025 it ran from 2 June to 31 August inclusive and it was free, with stops in Callantsoog at the Helmweg, Oosterweg, Westerweg, Abbestederweg, Dorpsweg, Zeeweg and Zwanenwater. That it runs again in 2026 is certain, but the exact operating period for this year we have not had confirmed. The bus is accessible with a rollator, a wheelchair or an assistance dog.

Can you get here in a wheelchair?

The access itself is surfaced right up to the sand, which takes away the biggest obstacle: OpenStreetMap gives concrete as the surface. At the foot of the access stands beach pavilion De Toko, and that is one of the two addresses in Callantsoog that gemeente Schagen names for a beach wheelchair, “for a small fee”. The other is De Stern, further to the north.

Two things do not add up there. Other sources name other pavilions for those same beach wheelchairs, and they contradict each other about the price as well: one names a small fee, the other free use. And how you reserve one, whether that is necessary and until what time, we have not established. Ring the pavilion before you drive.

What is clear: driving is not allowed here, not even with a disability. For that situation the municipality issues an exemption for strandslag 15 at Sint Maartenszee and strandslag 17b at Petten Centrum. Callantsoog is not on that list.

Is the beach guarded?

In July and August it is. Reddingsbrigade Callantsoog “Paal 13” is then present at the posts seven days a week from 10.00 to 18.00. For the rest of the year there is no active supervision, the brigade writes itself; outside those hours the volunteers only turn out on a call from the control room.