Beach access Petten: free parking and 123 metres of boardwalk

Petten does not have one beach access but nine, and there is exactly one with a car park, a pavilion and a post of the Reddingsbrigade: 17B Petten Centrum. That is the access people mean when they say the beach at Petten, and it is the access this page is about.

Which beach access do you want?

17B Petten Centrum. Rijkswaterstaat, the national water authority, counts eight of them in the bathing water profile for Petten, from north to south: 16 Petten Korfwater, 17 Petten, 17A Panoramaduin, 17B Petten Centrum, 17C Petten West, 17D Nolmerban, 17E Hazedwarsdijk and 17F Hondsbossche Zeewering. The beach map of gemeente Schagen adds 17G Leiweg to the end.

Those numbers are strandslag numbers. A strandslag is a numbered access through the dunes: the numbers stand on the signs and the emergency services work with them, so it is the number you give rather than a street name when you have to call for help.

The difference between those accesses lies in what the beach in front of them is allowed to be. Access 17 up to and including 17E is guarded recreation beach. At 17F and further south lies the activity zone, where members of a boat club launch small craft. Between 16 Korfwater and 17 Petten lies the surfing zone. So if you want to swim on the guarded part, you stay between 17 and 17E.

Next to 17B lie 17A Panoramaduin about 190 metres to the north and 17C Petten West about 265 metres to the south, measured in a straight line. At every access there is a provincial information board and cycle parking.

Where can you park?

On the car park at the end of the Strandweg, right by the access. Rijkswaterstaat writes that there is room there for roughly 250 to 300 cars. That figure is not in the table on this page, because 250 to 300 is an estimate from a 2020 report and not a count. How many spaces there really are now, we have not been able to find out.

Next to the car park stands the information centre of hoogheemraadschap Hollands Noorderkwartier, the regional water authority, and on the other side lies a campsite. At the head of the access there are, according to OpenStreetMap, seven disabled parking spaces, permit holders only. At beach access 17 Petten there are three more.

Driving up the access itself is not possible. Gemeente Schagen: “Strandslagen are only accessible to pedestrians, cyclists and holders of an exemption.” Some of the accesses also have a barrier.

What does parking cost in Petten?

Nothing. Rijkswaterstaat notes at 17B that visitors park there free of charge, OpenStreetMap has the car parks on the Strandweg down as free of charge, and no coastal rate appears on the parking pages of gemeente Schagen. What is there concerns the blue zone in the centre of Schagen, where you need a parking disc.

This is exactly where visitors get it wrong: Petten falls under gemeente Schagen, not under Bergen. At Hargen aan Zee, six kilometres to the south, you pay 2.45 euros per hour from 1 March to 1 November. So do not carry that rate over in your head, and do not go looking for a machine either.

Whether a maximum parking time applies and whether traffic marshals are on duty in high season when the car park is full, we have not been able to establish. On an ordinary day an estimated 500 visitors come, on a peak beach day 3,000 to 4,000.

How far do you walk from the car to the beach?

123 metres. That is the length of the Strandslag Centrum boardwalk, measured over the geometry in OpenStreetMap, from the end of the surfaced road to the sand. The path is made of wood.

On top of that comes how far your car stands from that end, and that makes a real difference. The disabled spaces lie about 26 metres from the head of the access, the parking strip along the Strandweg about 74 metres, and the second free car park further south a good 200 metres. From that last one you walk more like 320 metres than 123.

The municipality gives no official walking distance from car park to sea. The 123 metres is our own measurement on the map, not a figure from a sign.

May the dog run off the lead on the beach?

From 1 October to 1 April all day. From 1 April to 1 October a lead requirement applies between 09.00 and 19.00, with a lead of no more than 1.5 metres, and it applies not only on the beach but also on the access paths leading to it. Before nine and after seven it may run off the lead.

Gemeente Schagen has four permanent off-lead stretches on the beach: 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 lies at Petten. Post 20,000 stands just north of beach access 16 Korfwater, and Korfwater itself already lies a good 750 metres in a straight line north of Centrum. At 17B the lead requirement therefore simply applies.

If you walk south from here, you cross the municipal boundary with Bergen on the way, where the dog may run off the lead from 1 October to 1 May. In April it is therefore on the lead during the day on this side and not on the Bergen side.

Can you get here in a wheelchair?

Not properly yet. Gemeente Schagen lists beach wheelchairs at Callantsoog (De Toko and De Stern), Groote Keeten (Klavertje Vier) and Sint Maartenszee (Paviljoen Zuid). At Petten it says something else: “We intend to make the beach wheelchair-accessible. That still depends on the completion of the plans in Petten.” So hiring a beach wheelchair is not possible here.

With a disabled parking card you can apply for an exemption from the driving ban and drive up the access. Watch out for a contradiction in the municipality’s own documents: the beach page names 17b Petten Centrum, the application page names strandslag 17 in Petten. Which of the two is right, we have not been able to establish, so ring ahead before you drive. About 70 metres from the head of the access there is a public toilet which OpenStreetMap lists as wheelchair-accessible and paid.

How do you get here without a car?

The stops are in the village, not at the access. Plein 1945 lies about 395 metres from the head of the access, Eriksstraat 470 to 550 metres, depending on the direction. From the stop you therefore still add those 123 metres of boardwalk.

Line 151 runs from Alkmaar station via Schoorl, Groet and Camperduin to Petten. In the summer season the Kustbus, line 851, also runs from Den Helder station to Plein 1945, and that one is free. We have not checked either line with the operator itself, so check the current timetable before you set off. By bike you get there along the Strandweg right up to the access.

There is supervision during the bathing season, from 1 April to 1 October inclusive, daily on the guarded recreation beach. The post of Reddingsbrigade Petten is at Strandslag Centrum 3, the beach pavilion next to it at Strandslag Centrum 2. Between what times someone is at the post, we have not been able to find out.