The Spell of Holland by Burton E. Stevenson

It was my friend Joan of Planet Joan who pointed me in the direction of The Spell of Holland by Burton E. Stevenson, she’s a keen armchair traveller and you can read her thoughts on the book here.

house 2

I really enjoyed this book and I’m just glad that I intend to go back to visit Holland again sometime in the future as I’ve taken notes of lots of places to visit next time we’re there.

The book was first published in 1911, Joan has a lovely old copy of it but I made do with a free download from Forgotten Books, if you’re interested you can get it here. The author and his wife Betty hailed from Ohio and were unusual in that unlike most travellers they wanted to see the real Holland so they dodged the tourist hotspots and visited towns which were off the beaten tourist track.

What amazed me was just how little things seem to have changed in the Netherlands over the space of 103 years! All right – you don’t see people going about in their traditional costumes nowadays and the only person I saw actually wearing wooden clogs was selling them, but otherwise there are lots of things which haven’t changed at all.

house 1

I’ve always thought of Scotland as being until recently a strict Presbyterian place, but it’s over 30 years since shops in Scotland started opening on Sundays, and I can’t ever remember anyone avoiding working on the Sabbath day. Stevenson and his wife were surprised by the strict observation of it and it’s still exactly the same today. No shops open at all and my brother’s neighbour once complained about him working in his garden on a Sunday, when he should obviously have been reading his Bible. Jacky of course had a very good answer to that complaint which was – Did you go to church this morning? His neighbour of course replied that he did go to church. J asked him if it had been warm in there and the neighbour replied that it had been nice and warm. So J then said that it was only warm because a man in a power station had been working to supply the energy for it – on a Sunday! So that shut the neighbour up and he never had any problems with him again!

house  very dutch

Stevenson described the staircases in Dutch homes as being more akin to ladders than stairs, and that is true in modern Dutch homes too. I couldn’t believe it when I saw my niece’s stairs. I would just like to know what the statistics are regarding accidents on stairs in Holland. I almost went up her’s on my hands and knees and going down was scary, in fact Stevenson said that he was always tempted to turn around and go down them as if they were ladders. I felt the same!

Breakfasts in Holland were described exactly as they are now, lots of different bread and rolls, cold meat, fruit, cheese and eggs. The only difference was that my Dutch family memebers also ate porridge/oatmeal but that might have been the Scottish influence and it might not be Dutch at all. The porridge was made in a magnetron which is what the Dutch call a microwave. We think magnetron is a much better name – so science fiction-ish so we have given up microwave for magnetron. Obviously those things didn’t exist in 1911 though.

a garden

It seemed that way back when the book was written the men didn’t do much in the way of work, whereas the poor women were run off their feet, usually whilst a man just looked on. They walked for miles with their milk pails on yokes when there were carts which could easily have been used to transport the milk, and the milkmaids. The women were even out scrubbing the streets and I have to say that nowadays in rural Holland everything does look clean and tidy but I don’t think they go that far now.

house distance

I took all of the above photos in or near the small town of Opende in North East Holland. I didn’t see two houses the same in Holland, people seem to design their own homes. I just wish I had thought to take a photo of some of the suicidal staircases. I believe that the third house, which is the one with a for sale sign outside it was actually built in 1911, when The Spell of Holland was published.

If you fancy a bit of armchair travelling yourself you might want to take a look at The Spell of Holland too. If you want to have a look at a Dutch magazine have a look at Seasons here.

The Road to the Hook of Holland

In the Netherlands whoever wins a contract to build a motorway must provide artwork as part of the deal, which is why there are several enormous concrete elephants by the side of the motorway near where my brother lives. They are much bigger than lifesize. I took this photo as we were driving past on our way back home so it isn’t the best, in fact most of the photos I took are quite blurry.

landscape  elephants

The one below is of a rusty ship, rust seems to be quite a theme because there were a couple of rusty houses too.

landscape / sculpture

Below is a photo taken from the motorway on the road back to the Hook of Holland.

landscape  water

And the last three I took from the ferry as we were sailing back to Harwich from the Hook of Holland. It was a flat calm the whole way, much smoother than a train journey, which I found a bit disappointing as I do enjoy a good heaving sea but it does seem to make a lot of people heave in a different way altogether so the lack of rough seas probably came as welcome to most of the passengers.

Hook of Holland 1

Hook of Holland 2

Hook of Holland 3

De Kruidhof Botanic Garden, the Netherlands

k

I don’t think I’ve seen anything like the fungus above, outside of a children’t book illustration. There was quite a colony of them, all shouting “poisonous” with their vibrant red colour.

De Kruidhof 9 butterfly 2

This butterfly was having a drink from a sedum flower.

And below it’s a different butterfly on a buddleia. It was a good day for butterflies considering it was mid September.
De Kruidhof 10 butterfly 3

The sedums are in the foreground. We almost had the whole of the botanic gardens to ourselves, I suppose if we had gone in high summer it would have been much busier.

De Kruidhof 11

There’s also a great museum attached the the botanic gardens . It has loads of wonderful geological specimens and ancient artefacts going back to neolithic times, well worth a look.

De Kruidhof – Botanische Tuin Fryslan

We had really good weather while we were in the Netherlands, it was that Indian Summer which we often hope for but rarely get, this year it turned up in the Netherlands and Britain.

De Kruidhof

So although it wasn’t quite the best time of the year to visit a botanic garden we decided to visit one anyway. De Kruidhof Botanic Garden was still looking good and it has a great plant nursery attached to it, of course I just had to buy some.

De Kruidhof 2

It must be nice to have a house which backs on to such a lovely botanic garden. Spot who got into the photo above.

De Kruidhof 6

The apple/pear walkway had the most amazing crop of fruit, this is a really beautiful way of growing fruit, if you have plenty of space of course.

De Kruidhof 14

I took lots more photos, but more of those ones sometime later probably. De Kruidhof is a lovely place to visit if you happen to be in that part of the Netherlands.

Surhuisterveen, the Netherlands

Surhuisterveen 3

I spotted the house above when we were parking the car in the village of Surhuisterveen which is actually in Friesland, a part of North East Netherlands, where they speak a different language which sounds to me more akin to Polish than Dutch.

I love the look of this house, to me it looks fairly modern but they do still put thatched roofs on newish houses in the Netherlands. It was the weather vane which really attracted me though. Who wouldn’t want a Viking ship on their roof?!

Surhuisterveen 1

Or is it just the Viking in me taking over?

Surhuisterveen

Groningen from the canal

Groningen Canal 1
Well you can’t go to the Netherlands and not go on a canal trip, so here we are at the beginning of it (I think) I took loads of photos from the boat, just because the buildings all look so different.

Groningen Canal 6

I have to say that the water is really murky brown but I did actually see a man dangling a fishing rod into it. I wouldn’t fancy eating anything which was swimming around in it, mind you I think he was being optimistic because I can’t imagine that fish would survive in it!

Groningen Canal 3

I find it difficult to tell how old some Dutch buildings are, places which seemed very well preserved and youngish to me were actually about 400 years old, I have no idea about the ones above but I suspect they are quite historic.

Groningen Canal 8

The photo above features a houseboat, I don’t think it will be a very quiet or comfy existence because they are sandwiched between a busyish road and on the edge of a busy waterway with tourist boats constantly going past, they must be able to hear the tour guides’ spiel, in several languages! The large wooden wing shaped thing on the left of the boat is actually a stabiliser which is used when the houseboats take part in races!

Groningen Canal 9

A lot of the old buildings were originally warehouses for gin, tobacco or whatever, and they have been converted into living accomodation.

Groningen Canal 11

So that’s a few of the views which I got of Groningen from the canal, which hopefully will give you some kind of idea of what the place is like.

Groningen, the Netherlands

The biggest place which we visited during our recent Netherlands trip was the university town of Groningen. I like university towns because with a high population of young people they’re always vibrant.
Groningen bikes
We were well warned to be on the look-out for kamikaze cyclists, obviously there are always a lot of bikes around anywhere in the Netherlands but more so in university towns. In fact it wasn’t as dangerous an experience as Cambridge where the cyclists whizz around in a much more cavalier and dangerous fashion. Being so incredibly flat is obviously a big plus for cyclists, in fact I saw a lot of really elderly people who were still cycling and they looked like they were too old to be able to get about on their own, but they were doing fine, it’s a great way of keeping your legs strong it would seem.

Groningen Martini tower

The Martini Tower above seems to be the most famous landmark in Groningen. The photo below is of the sundial which is attached to the tower. I like sundials, especially when they are attached to ancient buildings like this.

Groningen tower sundial

Groningen old building

I took the photo above because I liked the look of the old building which must have started off as a grand venue for something but I didn’t manage to find out what its original use was, it’s now an eatery.

Lastly, I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this poster in a bookshop window. It’s in English of course and it amazed me how much English there was about the place. It must make it easier for people to learn the language I suppose, everyone seems to speak English anyway. That’s just a few of the Groningen photos which I took, next time you’ll see the town from the canal.

Groningen Books sign

The Netherlands

Holland 2 010

The photo above is the first view we got of the place we were staying in in the Netherlands, you can see the stables straight ahead where the four horses live, there were five but one died a few months ago – old age, she had a good innings.

Holland 2 009

As you can see, the house itself is thatched although not completely thatched, in common with a lot of Dutch houses. The tiles are shiny black ones, very different from the orange terracotta tiles which are common in Scotland, and those ones came originally from the Netherlands too, as ballast in ships. All of the houses in the area are different from each other. The farmers just seem to have drawn houses and got local builders to put build them. It’s just as well that the houses were individual as it helped me to recognise places, otherwise the very flat landscape bamboozled me, I need hills and natural outcrops to help me to know where I am.

Holland 2 011

The wee house which you can see to the left of the main house is completely thatched and in the past it was used for cooking and eating in. The farm workers weren’t allowed to trail their muck and mud into the house so the farmhouses all have these structures. Now the mini house is used as a laundry room, like an updated wash house, very handy as it keeps all the washing machine noise out of the house.

Holland 4 008

The photo of the stained glass above is one of five windows which were in our bedroom. I love stained glass and I think this design would transfer really well into a patchwork quilt design. Maybe one day I’ll get around to doing it!