Lost in the Dunes

We got a little behind here. Two weeks ago, Saturday morning, began as Hell. In Amsterdam Centraal train station, waiting for the next train to Den Helder, I let my front bike tire deflate and spent a sweaty hour trying to get it to seal again. One Den Helder train came and went, then another. Finally, I ride and arrive just before NOON in Den Helder, get outside on the streets to test the front tire--and it starts to blow cold and rain hard. Soaked, I duck under a garage overhang and eat my raisin bread for lunch. It is one o'clock before it stops raining.

Den Helder seems to be a military town, and no wonder. The dunes guard the only practical entrance to the old Zuider Zee, which for several hundred years pretty much defined the Dutch nation. Now Den Helder is best known for the ferry (pictured) to Texel island and its nature preserve (definitely on my ride list).
 

The dikes are all that protect North Holland from the North Sea. The sky is a winter sky, and this...this is considered good weather here.
 

It was the dunes and seacoast I came here for. The trails led throught the dunes (pictured at top of this post), which were deserted and forbidding even on this relatively warm day. The coast somehow seemed stormy even on this relatively calm day.
 

Generally, the Dutch have arranged their lives to mitigate the noise and dinginess that overpopulation always threatens. An emphatic exception is: campsites just inside the North-Holland dikes from the North Sea. These are just as cheerless (at least to me) as they are in Florida or New Jersey. Here's an amusement for you: divide the Dutch coastline by the Dutch population. What is each person's share of beach?--about the width of your thumb. It's amazing the place can function at all.
 

What's even more amazing is that most of the Netherlands is open space. There is probably no true wilderness here, which is sad in a way--but at least the place is not covered completely over with sprawling suburbs and parking lots. It seems that everyone outside of Amsterdam and Rotterdam can bike to open country--not just parks--within ten minutes. It is amazing to find so much beauty, to appreciate that it has not been covered over. Separating city from non-city seems to be key to Dutch psychic survival. It works--I thought I might go stark raving in such a crowded place. Very far from it.