The Palendorp near Petten: 160 poles on the beach

One hundred and sixty poles, six to twelve metres tall, set in the shape of ten houses and a church. OpenStreetMap has it down as tourism=attraction, and that source says little more about it.

Where exactly is the Palendorp?

At 52.76732 / 4.65179, roughly 740 metres as the crow flies west of the village centre of Petten, on the seaward side. Petten sits on the North Sea coast of Noord-Holland, the province that runs north from Amsterdam.

The beach in front of Petten belongs to the Hondsbossche Duinen (the Hondsbossche dunes). Between 2013 and 2015 sand was dumped there over the old basalt dyke, so there is now a beach and dune area about 300 metres wide in front of the coast. Whether a surfaced or marked path runs to the poles, and whether that is manageable with a pushchair or a wheelchair, we have not been able to verify.

Who made it, and when?

We do not know. The maker, the year and the question of whether the work is meant to be temporary or permanent are not in the sources we have been able to check. We would rather put no name and no year here than one we cannot verify.

What we do have: the number of poles, their height, the shape of ten houses and a church, and the coordinates. If you know more, and can back it up, we would like to hear it.

Where can you park?

Free, on the Strandweg or the Korfwaterweg for example. Petten falls under the municipality of Schagen and therefore outside the paid parking zones of the municipality of Bergen, which apply only in Bergen, Schoorl, Bergen aan Zee, Egmond aan Zee and Hargen aan Zee.

That saves money compared with places further down the coast: at Camperduin you pay 1.00 euro per 30 minutes on the private car park, at Hargen aan Zee 2.45 euros per hour. How many spaces there are in Petten, how quickly they fill and how many metres you walk from the car to the poles, we have not counted or measured.

Can the dog come?

Yes, but from 1 April to 1 October on a lead, between 09.00 and 19.00. In Schagen that lead may be 1.5 metres at most. Outside those months and outside those hours he may run free.

If you walk south from the poles along the beach, watch for the municipal boundary halfway towards Camperduin. Bergen begins there, and there the dog may in fact run free from 1 May to 1 October before 10.00 and after 19.00. In April it is the other way round: on the lead on the Petten side, off the lead on the Bergen side. Bergen is changing its beach rules on 1 January 2027, so check both municipalities before you set off. Checked on 5 September 2026.

Is it busy?

We have no visitor numbers, and nobody here publishes them.

We do know how often it gets searched for: 2,400 times a month on Google, measured on 5 September 2026. Those are Dutch-language searches. That is more than the beach at Petten (720) and the campsites at Petten (590) put together. It makes the Palendorp the most searched thing in this village, while the existing tourist sites barely write about it.

What else is nearby?

The Piramideduin stands next to it, is 26 metres high and can be climbed. The Panoramaduin lies at 52.77335 / 4.65880, a good 800 metres from here, and is listed as a viewpoint in OpenStreetMap with its own Wikidata item, Q124326971. How high that dune is and whether a stairway runs to the top, we have not been able to establish.

Under the sand lies the Hondsbossche Zeewering, the old sea defence: 5.5 kilometres of dyke, from beach post 26 near Camperduin to about post 20 near Petten. Beach posts are the numbered markers that run the length of the Dutch coast and are how everything here gets located. Camperduin itself lies 4.8 kilometres south of Petten, measured as the crow flies.

How do you get there without a car?

In high season the Kustbus, line 851, runs from Den Helder station to this coast. Den Helder is the northern terminus of the railway line up from Amsterdam. Which lines serve Petten outside high season, and exactly where the stop is, we have not checked.

Coming from the south, it is almost five kilometres from Camperduin along the beach or over the sea defence, on foot or by bike.