natuur
Why you walk four kilometres at Schoorl and a few hundred metres at Camperduin
From the Schoorlse Nok the dune area continues for a good four kilometres before the beach begins. At the Zwarte Blink, three kilometres further west, that is 1.3 kilometres. That difference explains why Schoorl aan Zee can only be reached on foot or by bike.
That the Schoorlse Duinen (the Schoorl dunes) are the widest in the Netherlands is on every sign in the area. What that means in practice for your walk is on none of them. So we worked it out.
How did you measure that?
In the Actueel Hoogtebestand Nederland, the national elevation model, a half-metre grid captured with laser altimetry and available to anyone through the open map service PDOK. From two dune tops we read out a strip running due west and looked at where the dune stops and the beach begins.
From the Schoorlse Nok that is a good four kilometres. From the Zwarte Blink, which lies further west, 1.3 kilometres.
What does that mean in practice?
That Schoorl aan Zee has no road to the sea. According to the municipality of Bergen, that beach can only be reached by bike or on foot, and that is not a choice by the municipality but a consequence of that four kilometres of dune. Anyone who wants to drive to the beach goes round to Hargen aan Zee or Camperduin instead.
It also explains why crossing the dunes here feels more like a trek than a walk on the beach. You do not walk over a dune ridge, you walk straight through one.
And what about the highest dune in the Netherlands?
That is true too, but not where most people think. The Klimduin in the middle of the village is 51 metres and is the best known. The Catrijper Nok is 55.4 metres and is the highest. The Schoorlse Nok falls in between at nearly 49 metres, and we measured that ourselves because every source held to 48 without saying where that figure came from.
Is it true that this is the widest dune area in Western Europe?
We read that on more than one tourist site, but we have found it confirmed nowhere. Staatsbosbeheer, the Dutch state forestry service, itself calls the Schoorlse Duinen the highest dune area in the Netherlands and says nothing about the widest. We therefore stick to what we can actually point to: a good four kilometres of dune between the Schoorlse Nok and the sea.
What this article covers
Schoorlse Nok
The Schoorlse Nok is a viewpoint with a bench in the south-east of the Schoorlse Duinen (the Schoorl dunes), managed by Staatsbosbeheer. In the elevation model AHN4 we measure 48.85 metres above NAP on the top; OpenStreetMap and the tourist sites hold to 48 metres. The highest dune of Schoorl it is not: the Catrijper Nok is 55.4 metres and the Klimduin 51.
Zwarte Blink
The Zwarte Blink is a viewpoint in the Schoorlse Duinen (the Schoorl dunes), managed by Staatsbosbeheer, with a bench and a picnic table on the top. In the national elevation model AHN4 we measure 32.3 metres above NAP; OpenStreetMap and the tourist sites hold to 31 metres. You can only get there on foot or by bike.
Schoorlse Duinen
The Schoorlse Duinen (Schoorl dunes) hold the highest dune in the Netherlands: the Catrijper Nok, 55.4 metres, with a staircase of 249 steps to the top. The area belongs to Staatsbosbeheer, is open all year round and has more than 60 kilometres of walking paths.
Beach access Schoorl aan Zee
Schoorl aan Zee can only be reached by bike or on foot. There are no parking spaces at the beach: you leave the car in Schoorl and cover five kilometres along the Schoorlse Zeeweg, or you park for free at the bicycle transfer car park on the Groeneweg in Bergen.