The National Park Zuid-Kennemerland was formally established in 1995 and is one of 20 national parks in The Netherlands. A unique nature area for activities like walking, biking, horseback riding and swimming. Most of the areas in the park are free and accessible on roads and paths between sundown and sunset. I visited this park in June 2013 and I would like to share my experiences with you. The visit to this park was totally random. A quick look on Google Maps and this area caught my eye. It's around 100km from where I live so it took me around 1 hour driving to get there. I did not look up visitor information for this park beforehand, but instead, I just pinned a parking lot next to that area with GPS. That was maybe not the smartest thing, because the whole area is surrounded by a fence. I think that this is mainly because they do not want animals that live there to go out. It is also announced that not all areas are freely accessed by visitors. After a while of driving around, I ended up in the neighbourhood of a place called IJmuiden which lies north of the nature area. There was an entrance:
Inside the park, it strikes that there are dunes mixed up with forest scenery. The dunes are of course a sign of a nearby sea. Unfortunately, I didn't make it that far. But I'm planning to do more extensive hike in this area in the near future.
There is also a large forest, which is quite dense. Hiking though would require a machete knife, but that is not allowed.
And that's me. Posing next to some old branches.
The destination of my hike was the waterbird observation post. It was hidden off the main tracking path and I discovered it by accident.
After checking this place out I headed back. Below you can see the overview.
I also managed to take a panoramic shot of the surroundings.
Some trees, which I attempted to capture in HDR mode that is located on my Olympus TG-2 camera.
On the way out I encountered some nice grey horses.
You can view here the route that I have followed.