Thursday 7 January 2010

Winter in The Netherlands

It doesn't happen every year that The Netherlands gets some proper winter weather, but this winter there are both long periods with below zero temperatures and significant amounts of snow. Very nice and scenic! Unfortunately the snow gives horrible unreliable ice, so there is not as much ice skating yet as there could have been. And it does cause major problems for transport in general: no trains, no busses, no planes, and long long traffic jams on the roads. Yesterday again, it snowed 15 cm in a couple of hours and the trains stopped, the airport was mostly closed and there were some 200 km of traffic jams just in the northwestern part of The Netherlands. But we went for a beautiful walk in the dunes. As so much snow and ice is unusual in The Netherlands, many local governments are now nearly through their pile of salt they use for the roads, so the road traffic problems could get worse.

Beach between Ijmuiden and Zandvoort.

Windmill park in the sea.

Horses and Scottish cows walk freely through the dunes to keep the vegetation down.

Walking in the Utrecht hills (Utrechtse heuvelrug). We came past the Pyramid of Auterlitz (http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramide_van_Austerlitz (in Dutch)), originally built in the time of Napoleon, in 1804, and recently restored to its full glory.


One of the buildings in Beeckesteijn, one of the large old estates near Driehuis, now open for the public.

Fresh snow!

And a rare photo of myself.

Even prettier with some winter sunshine.

Aren't these cows beautiful?