Wassenaar Travel Guide – A Blast from the Past*

If you are busy researching what Wassenaar has to offer, then it is likely you are holidaying at the nearby Duinrell campsite and theme park. You may be hoping that there is a peaceful beach nearby that can tempt your children away from the nauseous pleasures of endless roller-coaster rides, hot-dogs and candy-floss.

Wassenaarslag (the Dutch name for the beach, not the local lady of loose morals) is about a ten minute car ride away from Duinrell.

You could ride there on hired pushbikes, I suppose, but such is the frivolous and playful nature of the weather in Holland you are quite likely to end up as the victim of one of its lighthearted torrential downpours. Therefore it is better to pay two euros to the car park attendant and be safe in the knowledge that there is a dry car only a hop and a skip away from the rising flood waters.


From the first (and cheaper) car-park you can either take the direct route to the beach (turn left, five minutes) or the longer route (turn right, twenty minutes), which goes through the sand dunes. I‘d recommend the longer route as you can then walk back along the beach after your stroll through these very pleasing dunes.

The dunes along this stretch of the Dutch coast are protected from tourist-erosion and you can only walk or cycle on the designated and fenced-off paths that bisect them. This is a noble objective, but the down-side is that the paths also get well-used by dogs as well as humans. Unfortunately the former, and possibly some of the latter, have no shame when it comes to defecating in public, thus you have to watch your step on the paths. Even those dogs’ eggs that have been baked hard in the sun may still have a soft-centre.

The beach itself is superb for paddling and picking up items that the sea has deposited. These range from millions of beautiful shells, and interesting bits of driftwood, to a wide range of sanitary-ware and used condoms. One of the cafes even features a picture of a whale that was once washed up on the beach.

So be careful of what your beach-combing children absentmindedly hand you for your inspection and approval, those whales can get a bit heavy.

*Blast from the Past – This is somewhere I’ve not visited recently, however I must have written about it at some point as I’ve just found it in my archive. So now its getting an airing on this website. My apologies if any of the facilities or attractions I’ve mentioned no longer exist. Indeed, due to rising sea levels, bush fires or military invasion by one of our crazier world leaders, the place itself may no longer exist. In which case I wouldn’t bother going there.

To see my travel guides about other places in The Netherlands click here.