Discover the northernmost part of the Netherlands on foot

This route takes you through the polders of Northeast Groningen. You take a walk around the beautiful villages of Spijk and Bierum. Both villages are located on the edge of the Groningen Hogeland, a region that is relatively high due to the alluvial marine clay. The landscape here is extremely open: you see grasslands and arable lands, crooked ditches, winding dikes and high skies. Part of the route you walk on the dike along the Eems, the river that flows into the North Sea.

Spijk is a church ring village that was still on the coast in the fifteenth century. Over the centuries, a lot of land has been reclaimed from the sea, so that Spijk is now located between the heavy marine clay. You walk a bit along the Spijksterriet, the stream that connects Spijk with the Eems. The old center has been designated as a protected villagescape. You walk past a church whose nave originally dates from the thirteenth century, although it was partly renovated in the seventeenth century after a fire. Around the church are houses, former shops and cafes from the nineteenth century. You will also pass the Ceres mill here, a grist and peeling mill from 1839. The mill is named after the Roman goddess of arable farming and grain.

Walking through the Hogeland you will see some capital farms, but also small workers' houses. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the difference between gentlemen farmers and smallholder farmers often led to strikes and violence. Nowadays the polders are a lot quieter. Only the many birds still cause commotion.

Bierum is an authentic mound village. You will see, among other things, the thirteenth-century Sebastian Church. There is a buttress with a passage against the tower. This buttress was originally intended to support the church's tower, but due to a fault in the foundation it is now actually pulling the tower down.