2017-08-14 52 4

Location

Dunes, officially known as "Amsterdamse Waterleiding Duinen". The area is used for water filtration and the purified water is then pumped to the city of Amsterdam.

Participants

Palmpje was able to go there today.

Plans

Unsure about the time. But go up to the entrance at De Zilk and walk about 1.5 km to the hashpoint.

Expedition

The nice thing about this large nature area on the coast in the dunes is that you are allowed to roam at will in a very large part of it. This is where water from the rivers is pumped in and filtered by natural processes (there is pre-processing in case the German industries put nasty things in the water). The clean water is pumped up out of the sweet water bell under the dunes (having been replenished by the water pumped in) and transported to the city of Amsterdam. I believe it is different now but for a long period of time water was not charged in the city except for an annual lump sum. The hashpoint happened to fall only 100m from a paved path and due to a canal crossing this led to a predominantly paved walk. The hashpoint was found very easily in an open area. When I put down my rucksack and GPS, the reading kept telling me ZERO meters to go for at least one minute. That was quite extraordinary. Of course a tower was visible but being far enough away it will not show really well on a photo. Deer were resting about 100m away but they just let me be. There are so many of them here that they have gotten used to people approaching really close. I kept it to 50m but they still did not run, even though the wind was in my back.

On the way back to the entrance I made a detour to the gnome village (Yes, they really exist!) where a previously found geocache is located. Had I walked a bit further another cache could have been revisited but I was out of time.

As the crow flies, this was less than 6 km away from home and the walking distance was less than 2 km. Could have walked it all but there was not enough time.