Cycling 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 meters. That is the highest dune in the Netherlands. During the war, a German radar post stood here. It is striking how wooded the dunes are. Still, it took a lot of effort to get it this 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 best as possible against the drifting sand by maintaining the afforestation of the inner dune edge. But their fields were also repeatedly flooded. The story goes that there was such a storm in the dune that an entire castle disappeared under the sand near Aagtdorp. Nobody knows where. Until around the beginning of the common era, a huge dune area stretched from Hargen, extending from the current coastline for miles into the sea. This old, gently sloping dune landscape was covered with unspoilt forests, mainly consisting of birch. People were already living in these so-called old dunes. Shards and a hand millstone were 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 a depth of 1 meter above sea level, remains of human habitation and plow furrows were found. The historian Arie Schermer dated these finds from the 11th century. This must have been just before the formation of the new high dunes. While people were driven out of the dunes by the rising sand and sought refuge in the hinterland, they started reclaiming the areas behind the dunes. Meanwhile, the same threatening sand became a new source of income. The new dune sand from the north contained no shells, so it was low in limestone, 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 fee of 30 guilders per year had to be paid to the States of Holland. The sand was mainly used for the glass industry, 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 could look up from the barge at the still partially existing 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 mining industry moved to the area behind it, the Pirola valley. The sand was removed by horse and cart and, in the middle of the last century, even by a small locomotive with trucks. Until the 1960s, the sand was finally transported by trucks to the sand-lime brick factory in Schoorldam. The low-limestone sand in the Schoorlse dunes has long been known for its good quality. The privilege of digging 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's 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 spot 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 fill in the Rokin in Amsterdam.