2016-07-08 53 6

Location

In a forest in Wijnjewoude, Friesland.

Participants

Expedition

I had been planning to visit some interesting places in Friesland province for a while now, so when this hashpoint came up I decided that today would be a good day to head north. I first had a look at the Wouda Pumping Station, which is a large steam-powered installation and World Heritage Site that used to keep Friesland dry. It can still do this, but nowadays it's purely used as backup for other, more powerful pumping stations. Nevertheless, very interesting and worth a visit if you're in the area.

By the time I left it had started raining, so I decided to postpone the hash and wait for it to clear up, visiting some museums in Heerenveen and Drachten and eating lunch. The weather seemed to be improving in the afternoon, so I headed towards the village of Wijnjewoude and parked my car at the entrance to the forest. The hash was still about 1 km away, so it was still a bit of a walk, in a forest that was rather soggy in places with all the rain of the past few hours. A sign at the entrace actually explained that this bit of forest is very important for the water supply, since the precipitation that falls here drains into an aquifer that is used for drinking water production.

As I got closer to the hash I had to go a bit off the footpath and found myself walking along a small drainage ditch that wasn't on my GPS map. After about 175m I discovered that the hash was on the other side of the ditch! It's interesting to know that the national sport of Friesland is something called fierljeppen, which involves jumping over water using a long pole. However, I've never done this myself and didn't have a suitable pole with me either, so I decided to go back and walk around the ditch. I found the spot, took some pictures, tried to avoid the mosquitoes again, and went back.

There was also a small pond in the forest (photo 9). Apparently this is a leftover from something called a pingo, which sounds like a cute antarctic animal but which is actually a small hill with ice on the inside. These were present here at the end of the last Ice Age, and when the climate warmed up they melted and left behind small circular lakes.

Afterwards I went back to my car and on my way to visit the Frisian Museum in Leeuwarden (which was also pretty interesting).