Bicycle route dunes

The dunes of Schoorl are among the widest and highest in the country. From Aagtdorp it is 4 kilometers straight through the dunes to the sea. Near the Reformed Church in the village of Schoorl, the sand hills rise steeply to a height of 54 metres. That is the highest dune in the Netherlands. A German radar station stood here during the war. It is striking how wooded the dunes are. Still, it took a lot of effort to get it so green. Until well into the nineteenth century, this area was a complete sand desert. What wanted to grow was eaten by rabbits. The villagers protected themselves as much as possible against the drifting sand by maintaining the afforestation of the inner dune edge. But even so, their fields repeatedly submerged. The story goes that it was so hot in the dune that an entire castle has disappeared under the sand near Aagtdorp. Nobody knows where. Until around the beginning of the era, a huge dune area stretched from Hargen, which, starting from the current coastline, stretched for kilometers into the sea. This old, gently sloping dune landscape was covered with pristine forests, mainly consisting of birch. People were already living in these so-called old dunes. Shards and a hand millstone have been found on the beach in Camperduin, dating from 200 to 300 BC. In the Pirola valley behind the Hargergat, after the area had been excavated to 1 meter NAP, remains of human habitation and plow furrows were found. The historian Arie Schermer dated these finds from the 11th century. This must therefore have been just before the formation of the new high dunes. While the people were driven out of the dunes by the rising sand and sought refuge in the hinterland, they started to reclamate the areas behind the dunes. Meanwhile, that same menacing sand became a new source of income. The new dune sand from the north did not contain shells, so it was low in lime, but at the same time it was beautifully white and unprecedentedly pure. The sand was removed from the dunes by horse and cart, for which in 1597 a lease payment of f 30 per year had to be paid to the States of Holland. The sand was mainly used for the glass industry and even in England. In Hargen the dune could be reached via the Hondsbossche Zandvaart and in the period between 1685 and 1730 the Hargergat (\\\'De Hondsbos Zantmennerij\\\') was dug in such a way that you looked up from the barge to the still today partially present monumental farms. When the Slaperdijk was completed in 1528, the current Harrigervaart was dug on the east side of this dike. The Hondsbossche Zandvaart on the other side of the dike fell into disrepair and was eventually closed. The sand men moved to the area behind, the Pirola valley. The sand was transported by horse and wagon and in the middle of the last century even by a small locomotive with lorries. Until the sixties of the 19th century, the sand was finally transported by truck to the sand-lime brick factory in Schoorldam. The low-calcium sand in the Schoorl dunes has always been known for its good quality. The privilege to excavate sand was granted in the distant past by the Lords of Bredero. Later, as mentioned above, the States of Holland took over that role. Cement from Schoorl sand was also used for the construction of the 42 forts of the Defense Line of Amsterdam, which took place between 1880 and 1914. Sand was also excavated at the place where'Het Zandspoor\\\' now stands. From'de Miljoenen Juffrouw\\\' the sand went by rail to Schoorldam. There it was loaded onto ships and used to dampen the Rokin in Amsterdam.