Bloemendaal aan Zee, love for dunes

Let your thoughts wander over the water as you find your way through the dunes. With the surf in the background you can get a breath of fresh air. Cycle around the Amsterdam Water Supply Dunes, an area of 3,400 hectares through which fifty million cubic meters of drinking water flows every year. The area has the largest fallow deer population in the Netherlands per hectare; that amounts to approximately 2000 fallow deer! Zuid-Kennemerland National Park is also a beautiful area that this route takes you through. The park, which covers approximately 38 square kilometers, was established in 1995. Here you will mainly find dunes, but also some beautiful estates, dune edge forests and beaches. Rare plants can thrive here because of the calcareous soil and shrubs grow with berries, which attract all kinds of songbirds. A hundred different bird species have been spotted in the area, but mammals such as squirrels, hedgehogs, rabbits, foxes, roe deer and fallow deer also find their way through the sand. In addition to Scottish highlanders, Shetland ponies and Konik horses, a number of bison have been released. Because these European bison can be dangerous, they are kept in a closed area, but if you are lucky you will see one emerge at the watering hole, where a viewing point has been specially created. The area becomes extra special because the locomotive lives here, a grasshopper species that occurs in only three places in the Netherlands.