Water, wind, and moorlands - Islands and fishing romanticism, barrows and an opulent landscape: the north has something for everybody.
"If you’re driving north from Randstad, you reach ‘Kop van Noordholland’, the headland between the North Sea in the west and the Ijssel Sea in the east. It’s a diversified area with more sunshine than the rest of the country. The dike leads to Frisia, the most scenic region of the country. The many lakes and long canals are ideal for sailors. The white, triangular sails moving through the fields with black and white cows are an odd sight. The city limit signs in Friesland are bilingual: apart from Dutch, the official minority language Frysk is spoken by 400,000 Frisians. To the east of Frisia there is the province of Groningen. It’s a rural region with many thatched farm houses. A large gas source was discovered in Slochteren, east of Groningen, in the late Fifties.
The profit from the gas export was used to build a (formerly generous) social state. Drenthe, the province south of Groningen, is a popular hiking and cycling paradise. Many prehistorically graves or hunebedden (barrows) are found in these former moorlands.
