Walk of the week was Groet – Callantsoog, along the most famous dike of the Netherlands: the Hondsbosse Zeewering or SeaRepulser of Hondsbos. It is visible as the straight part of the horizon line on the image above. On this location a heavvy storm in the Middle Ages broke through the original dunes, necessitating a man-made sea defence. The Hondsbossche Zeewering has a long history of storm damage and dike repair – showcasing all that is good and bad about dike building and maintenance in the Netherlands.

I myself had the Repulsor hammered into my mind at school – a classic dike, with stone covering it, and lots of asphalt to keep things together. No longer! The dike is now clad with dunes on its seaward side. New nature, allowing for the unhindered progress of plants and animals from north to south along the cost, and vice versa. Humans can traverse, too. Nice!

We then walked north along the edges of tulip-bulb-growing country. The bulb fields under a covering of straw. Straw-coloured straw – the artists’ proposal of colouring the straw so as to have colour on these fields all year around not having quite made it…..

And here is my poem-map. Finished doing the poems at home – in winter time it is just too cold to quietly sit and contemplate. It is a good way to relive the walk, as it turns out. Strange how memory works …. like beads on a necklace, the images of the walk came back to me.