The Schoorlse Nok near Schoorl: 48.9 metres, and not the highest

A numbered bench on a head of sand in the far south-east of the Schoorlse Duinen (the Schoorl dunes), at the end of the longest climb the mountain bike route here has to offer. Among cyclists the Schoorlse Nok is better known than among walkers. Every source we checked holds to 48 metres. The national elevation model says something else, and the point that is called the Schoorlse Nok on the map is not even the top.

How high is the Schoorlse Nok?

48.85 metres above NAP (Normaal Amsterdams Peil, the Dutch ordnance datum, roughly mean sea level) at the highest point, measured in the Actueel Hoogtebestand Nederland, the national elevation model, version 4. That is the half-metre ground-level grid captured with laser altimetry between 2020 and 2022, and anyone can request it through the open map service PDOK. The top lies at 52.68467 / 4.69461.

It is not measurement noise. Above 48 metres there are 107 square metres of ground, above 47 metres 863. That is a genuine head and not a single outlier in the grid.

To test whether our measurement holds up, we ran it on a dune with a known figure. The Catrijper Nok is officially 55.4 metres; the same data set gives 55.31 there. Nine centimetres of difference.

Every source we found holds to 48 metres: OpenStreetMap, ontdek-schoorl.nl and noordhollandseduinen.nl. In OpenStreetMap that height has only been there since 24 September 2024, in a single edit by a volunteer and without a source reference. Before that, this point appeared on the map only as a bench. Where the figure 48 originally comes from we have not been able to establish. Staatsbosbeheer, the Dutch state forestry service, publishes no height for this dune itself and does not use the name Schoorlse Nok on its own area page.

One more thing to know before you walk out there: the point that is called the Schoorlse Nok in OpenStreetMap sits at 47.27 metres. That is the bench. The real head lies 99 metres north-north-west. On this page we keep to the coordinates of the bench, because that is where you come out if you follow the path, and for the view a metre and a half makes little difference.

Is the Schoorlse Nok the highest dune of Schoorl?

No, and by some margin. At 55.4 metres the Catrijper Nok is the highest dune in the Netherlands, and the Klimduin in the middle of the village is 51 metres. The Schoorlse Nok comes six and a half and two metres below those respectively.

It is not even the highest point on its own dune ridge. We searched the elevation model in a window of four by four kilometres around the dune: 623 metres to the north there is an unnamed head of 50.69 metres, and the whole ridge towards Schoorl stays between 49 and 51 metres there. Those heads have no name and no route goes over them. So the name Schoorlse Nok marks a place you walk to, not the highest sand.

How do you get to the top of the Schoorlse Nok?

On foot, by the dune entrance on the Duinweg between Bergen and Schoorl, near the hamlet of Aagtdorp, which lies a good 800 metres away. Ontdek-schoorl.nl and noordhollandseduinen.nl both give ten minutes for the climb and name Duinweg 66 in Schoorl as the address to navigate to. That address exists and lies roughly 300 metres from the top as the crow flies. How long you take yourself through loose sand, we have not walked.

The top lies on the Duintoppentocht, the red circular walk of Staatsbosbeheer, and on walking node route 25-25. The path over the top is in OpenStreetMap as closed to bicycles and closed to motor traffic.

For dogs, what applies here is what applies throughout the Schoorlse Duinen: on the lead from 1 March to 1 September because of nesting birds, outside that period free if he comes when called, and not in the grazing areas. Whether this dune entrance falls within such a grazing area, we could not establish on 6 September 2026. The signs at the entrance are what counts, not this page.

Where can you park?

Roughly 480 metres east-north-east there is an asphalted car park belonging to the municipality of Bergen, which OpenStreetMap lists as public and free. How many spaces that is, and whether in high season nothing really has to be paid there, we have not measured.

Noordhollandseduinen.nl points to the site by the riding school. In OpenStreetMap that is listed as parking for customers of the Duinmanege Van Poelenburg, at 554 metres. Do not head there blindly if you have no business there.

What stands on the top?

A bench with a backrest, numbered SC-82 in OpenStreetMap. It belongs to a series: SC-83 stands 88 metres further south and SC-78 further along the same path. That number was already there in 2015, years before anyone hung the name Schoorlse Nok on this point.

On the rest, the two walking sites contradict each other. Ontdek-schoorl.nl writes about a viewing platform with a picnic table and says that from here you can even see the North Sea. Noordhollandseduinen.nl mentions the same sand platform with a picnic table, but adds that the view runs westward over the treetops and is not as wide as on other dune tops. A picnic table or platform does not appear in OpenStreetMap. We have not stood there ourselves and cannot say who is right.

The sea is a long way off in any case. We read out a strip due west in the elevation model: from the Nok the dunes run on for a good four kilometres before the beach begins. For comparison: at the Zwarte Blink that is 1.3 kilometres. Noordhollandseduinen.nl makes the claim that you are standing here on the widest point of the dunes in Western Europe. That claim we have had confirmed nowhere; Staatsbosbeheer itself calls the Schoorlse Duinen the highest dune area in the Netherlands and says nothing about the widest.

Why do mountain bikers ride here?

For the climb. The MTB route Schoorl 2.0-Zuid runs 40 metres past the top, one way and anticlockwise, last checked in OpenStreetMap in 2024. Ontdek-schoorl.nl and noordhollandseduinen.nl both give the same figures: 320 metres long, 10 per cent on average, the longest and steepest climb in the area.

At the route manager we did not find those 320 metres and that 10 per cent again. The climb itself is certainly there. We read the elevation model out along the route points: within 500 metres of the top the route goes from 4.1 metres to 48.1 metres above NAP, and the lowest point lies a good 300 metres away as the crow flies. Exactly how long the path between them is, we have not measured, so whether that average comes out at 10 per cent or higher, we leave open.

Cyclists and walkers are not on the same path here. The footpath over the top is closed to bicycles, and the mountain bike path a little further on is closed to pedestrians. Stick to that, because this is a descent where you cannot see what is coming.

Where does the name Schoorlse Nok come from?

We do not know, and that is the honest answer. The Catrijper Nok got its name in 2014 through a competition run by RTV Noord-Holland, the regional broadcaster, and that is well documented. For the Schoorlse Nok we found no naming, no press release, no sign text and no mention at Staatsbosbeheer. On the map the name only surfaces in September 2024.

There is one historical trace, and it is thin. The Dutch Wikipedia article on gallows fields mentions at Schoorl “a high dune by the name of Schoorlse Nok” as the place where the village had its gallows, citing the study Galgenbergen en galgenvelden by H.C. Jelgersma from 1978. Whether that refers to this dune or to another high head near Schoorl, we have not been able to establish. That study we have not seen ourselves.

The word nok is otherwise simply Dutch for the topmost edge, as in the ridge of a roof. In these dunes we know of only two tops that carry it: this one and the Catrijper Nok, three and a half kilometres to the north-west.