Texel

This week Bron went to the West Frisian island of Texel as part of the Nynke Dekker group lab outing!

My fellow lab members and I assembled bright and early at Delft train station on Wednesday morning for the 3hr 30min journey to our accommodation at De Koog on Texel. Texel is pronounced Tessel and is the largest of the West Frisian Islands. It is easily accessible by ferry from Den Helder, Holland’s naval base. Despite being only a 20 min ferry ride away, Texel is still pretty wild and untamed. It hasn’t really been over-developed which is good news for the area. Texel is known for sheep farming and its fishing industry. We saw lots of sheep, cows, fields of maize and some fields of lilies.

Texel marked by the ‘A’. To the right of Texel are the islands Vlieland, Terschelling, Ameland and Schiermonnikoog.

Map of Texel, ~60 km in circumference.

After settling in at our accommodation, we hopped onto our rented bicycles and headed out into the rain for a pancake lunch! After lunch we broke into 3 groups and played ‘wie is de mol?’ in the forresty area just West of Den Burg. In the game everyone works together but there is one spy undermining the operation. It was a lot of fun and lovely to cycle through the forresty areas and fortunately the rain abated after lunch. Dinner was at De Koog close to our accommodation. We ate a lot in a few days! When we got home from dinner it had cleared and we could see the stars, it was really beautiful! Francesco and Xander gave me a tour of the Northern Hemisphere stars =) I realised how much I miss the Southern Hemisphere stars. 

Naval base at Den Helder

Pancakes! From left: Serge, Susanne (going on maternity leave soon), Ilja and Jennifer. I share an office with Serge, Susanne and Ilja

Wie is de mol?? From left: Sriram, Xander, Jaap, Dijana, Bojk and Serge. Turns out it was Bojk! (orange jacket)

Cycling through the forrest =)

Mushroom! I became a mol suspect when I stopped to take this photo...

Our 'wie is de mol?' team. Standing from left: me, Xander, Serge, Bojk, Sriram. Seated: Dijana and Jaap. 

Dinner on Wednesday night. This was just the starter! We ate a lot these few days =)

From left clockwise: Ilja, David, Charl, Francesco, Liset and Marijn

Thursday morning saw another early start as we headed to de Cocksburg for Wadlopen! The islands are flanked by the Waddenzee on the East and the North Sea on the West (forgive me if I have my directions incorrect, I am geographically challenged!). Wadlopen is basically walking on the mud flats. During high tide the shore is covered by water but at low tide the mud flats are exposed and are great for walking on. It is comical to see boats stranded on the shore! We had a real farmer-looking guide who guided us around the mud flats. It was really fun but also hard work! At times you sink knee deep in the mud! You have to keep moving otherwise you get really stuck; it’s like sinking sand, it sucks you in. One of the guys got stuck up to his knees and when he was pulled out his shoes stayed behind! Another girl got stuck up to her thighs. There were also more firmer parts to walk on and we also walked in a little river, surprisingly the water was pleasant and not too cold. During our walk we saw lots of seaweeds including Ulva or sea lettuce, lots of crabs, worms, pencil bait, oysters, alikreukel, sea gulls and other birds. The mud is black and sticks to you; we had quite a time cleaning up afterwards!

Our little house =)

Mud flats of the Waddenzee

Stranded

Wadlopen! The mud was soft and squishy to walk on and the seaweed slimy! 

Walking in a rivery part

After lunch at a pub/restaurant nearby overlooking the sea we had some ‘free time’. I cycled with a group down the West-side of the island back to our accommodation at De Koog. We went this way because it is along the dunes and coast line and there is a nature reserve, De Slufter, along the way. There was enough time to have a quick look around De Koog before heading to Oudeschild for dinner. Oudeschild is an old fishing village and it was really lovely soaking up the last of the sun drinking hot chocolate at the harbour.  

View of De Slufter

Sign in the restaurant at De Oudeschild 

Our group head Nynke chilling at the waters edge at the Oudeschild harbour

A boat at Oudeschild harbour at sunset

If you look at the map above you will quickly see that we cycled all around the island on Thursday. We cycled 12 km from De Koog to Oudeschild and 12 km back for dinner alone! We must have cycled at least 50 km on Thursday. I was dead tired and my bum was so sore!! It was a lovely day out though and we were really lucky with the weather. It was mostly sunny all day with a light breeze. I was relieved however not to have to cycle on Friday!

On Friday morning we said goodbye to our accommodation and headed to NIOZ close to the ferry near ‘t Horntje. It was bucketing with rain by the time we got to NIOZ but of all the days to rain Friday was probably the best day so we couldn’t complain. NIOZ is the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research. We were given a talk on what NIOZ does and then a tour of their facilities. NIOZ has its home in a modern building and is well equipped! They have their own deep sea going boat (which we didn’t see) and also makes a lot of their own equipment. They have a workshop dedicated to designing and making the gadgets they need for their deep sea research including a unit to test if their goods will survive the pressures a few hundred metres under the ocean.

And then, packed lunch in hand, it was time to go home =( I really enjoyed the trip to Texel. It was a good time to get to know other people in the group and spend a few days outdoors. Texel is lovely but probably not the most beautiful place I have ever been to. It needs something dramatic to add to its old charm, like a few sheer cliffs or something. A lot of people asked me if anywhere in SA is nearly as nice as Texel. How do you tell them that 90% of your country is a 100x to 1000x more beautiful? I had a hard time being polite! Lol.

Needless to say I was smashed when I got home on Friday! The weekend has been a quiet one catching up on home admin and resting. Justin played cricket in Eindhoven today, someone called ahead this time to check if the field was playable! Justin’s figures were 3 for 16 after 8 overs, well done! But his team still lost due to poor batting, come on guys!

At the moment there is an open air movie festival on in Museumpark not far from us. If it stops raining long enough we would be keen to catch a movie there; not sure if a break in the weather and an English movie will coincide though ‘~) We have also done some scouting and found an Irish pub where we can watch some of the rugby World Cup games due to start shortly! Yay! And we can enjoy some yummy Irish fare at the same time =)

Other news is Justin’s trip to Angola has been cancelled, woohoo!! There has been lots of indecision about this trip but I hope this is the last decision! Bron’s official TU Delft contract also starts this week, from 1 September. Hopefully they get all the paperwork done in time. And then this weekend is World Port Day in Rotterdam which we are hoping to check out! Details to follow next time =)

Hope you are well and had a good weekend! Have a good week and happy Spring day!

x