Texel in five walks - Third walk

The third walk of my vacation was by far the longest and most challenging. I started from De Koog where I was staying and walked all the way up north to the lighthouse along the rest of the west side of the island. Originally I wasn't going to go that far, but snow was predicted for the next day and I feared I wouldn't get any walking done then and would have to skip the area around the lighthouse. So it was sheer stubbornness that made me go further than planned.

The weather that day was a bit changeable. Still quite nice, but from time to time cloudy and already you could feel that the weather was going to change.

Here's an impression of that long and lovely walk:

This is town square of De Koog, it looks lovely, but these are the only authentic buildings in the entire town. :-)

You can see it was a much more cloudy day, though not all the time.

Here I enter De Nederlanden and De Muy, which is I think my favorite part of  Texel.

Here I enter De Slufter, which is an area where the sea has broken through the dunes and floods the land from time to time.

This picture was taken from quite far with my zoom camera.

I took tons of pictures of these reflections.

After this rather exhausting walk maybe it was a blessing that next day was a snow day. It gave me time to rest a bit and take it easy. And also...to read. When you walk outdoors all day it's hard to keep your eyes open at night, so even though I would have loved to have read a lot every night, my body just wouldn't let me. So a snow day gave me the opportunity to make up for that.

After reaching the most northern part of the island I would now be moving south along the east side, but that's for next post. Until then I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day.

Texel in five walks - Second walk

My second walk on Texel took me further north along the west side of the island right onto De Koog, which is the town I was staying in. So this day was kind of a walk home.

The weather was again lovely, probably the most beautiful day of the entire vacation, which I think shows in the photographs. A bit more frost made the first half of the walk extra pretty, but there was also more sun than any of the other days.

Here's an impression of walk number two:

(Semi) wild horses and highland cattle make sure the dunes don't get overgrown with bushes and such.

Here you can really see how frosty it was.

I brought my lunch with me every day and this was my lunch spot during this walk.

The whole west side of the island is a national park and I think it shows. The endlessness of the landscape and the beautiful dunes and forests make it a true pleasure to walk in, and the beach is always near on that side too.

It was convenient to be able to walk straight back to my apartment, which is also where my next walk would begin. But that's for next post. Until then I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day.

Texel in five walks - First walk

So let's begin our walking tour of Texel.

My original intention was to walk all around the island in six walks, but unfortunately there was one snow day where walking would have been unpleasant and photography impossible, so I skipped a little here and there, but still managed to most of my route.

My first (somewhat) long walk I started at 't Horntje which is on the south side of the island and where the ferry moors. I walked along the west side of the island onto a street named Jan van Ayeslag which is about a third of the length of the island northward. It was a beautiful, mostly sunny and somewhat frosty day. The kind of winter weather that is ideal for walking.

Here's an impression of that first walk which lead from the ferry site, past wetlands, water, dunes, beaches and more dunes.

Texel is way closer to the main land than my own island, so you can see it in the distance.

This is one of my favorite pics of this walk.

If you look carefully you can see the yellow/red mark on the post. That marked my route around the island.

These kind of posts showed where the flood-line used to be. The coastlines are always changing.

Very small in the distance you can see a church spire. That belongs to the down Den Hoorn, which I passed from afar.

Because it was so frosty the roads and paths were quite unpleasant to walk on, especially the dirt roads. They were all bumpy and rigid and hard on my feet. But the beautiful landscape made up for it and I enjoyed this first walk very much and felt I was off to a good start.

After I reached Jan van Ayeslag I took a bus to my apartment. The public transport system on Texel is quite smart. There are busstops everywhere within walking distance and you order the bus half an hour before you want to use it and state where you want to go. It's kind of like a cheap taxi between busstops. It helped me a lot on my walks which often started or ended somewhat in the middle of  nowhere.

Next time we will pick up where we left off today. Until then I wish you all a wonderful and artsy day.