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Vlieland is one of the West Frisian Islands off the coast of northern Netherlands. This island is a combination of sand dunes, wooded areas and meadows. There is only one village on the island, Oost-Vlieland as the second village was lost to the sea in 1736.
We had been told by many that this was a nice island to explore – it had plenty of hiking and biking trails and very little traffic as only the residence are allowed to have cars. All tourists that come by ferry must either walk or bicycle or take a taxi (very few of them). The ferry has an excellent system for taking everyone’s baggage into carriers (similar to what you see at airports) and then it is transported to the various hotels and campgrounds for the people. When you are in town you are overwhelmed by the crowds coming off the ferry with their backpacks and/or rolling luggage going through the town heading to their accommodations. We found out that this happened to be the beginning of a holiday week
We arrived in Vlieland on May 21
st after an eight hour motor sail from Den Helder. The
The Island of Vlieland
is quite long and thin with a variety of vegetation and is popular with the bird populations as wellweather was going to turn with very strong winds so figured we would stay for a couple of days. In fact it wound up that we stayed until May 24
th. It worked out well as it gave us some more time to explore the island. We had hoped to do more bike riding but the first couple of days the wind was so strong (25-30 knots) that it was better to walk those days and kept the bike riding to the day that the winds are cut down to a reasonable level.
We took one day to walk around the village and then wandered off on some of the various paths which led us to a beautiful long white beach. We almost felt like we were back in the Caribbean with the beaches so white, but the cool brisk winds off the sea told us we were farther north! We found that there are numerous campgrounds scattered over the island. The one we walked through was set up with tents that are provided – you just bring your own gear and enjoy!
We did get a chance to use our bikes while here and
Wild Roses Abound On the Island
giving off a wonderful scent as you walk or bike past. went down the side of the island that faces out to the Waddensee which was much calmer. You travel by meadows, sand dunes and forest along this route. We enjoyed both the smell of wild roses and pine trees as we traveled around the island. There were lots of birdlife both in the water and in the trees –once when we stopped we listened to a cuckoo that we figured was off schedule as he kept “cuckooing” for a very long time! There were plenty of young chicks following their mother while fighting the waves that were still prevalent even on this inland sea. It was enjoyable to get back on our bikes again and the best surprise of all was that we weren’t sore the next day!
We could easily have stayed longer to take more bike rides around the island but we wanted to take advantage of the weather window that opened to make a move to Helgoland so we could position ourselves well to get into the Kiel Canal and on to the Baltic.
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