we just returned from a trip to the northern provinces of the netherlands: groningen and friesland, making pictures, between delfzijl and the beginning of the afsluitdijk, driving as close to the sea as we could. the idea was to drive to the end of the road and make pictures of that what you can see there, in this case behind the dikes. no special pictures, just pictures to show others what you see there.
the idea was to see as many places as we could, driving on public roads, getting out of the car, walking up the staircases or roads and look what we saw there, all along the seacoast. quite often there were others dikes, or fences, or private areas, or the roads just stopped. in that case we had to try other roads. our maps were not always reliable but more or less we managed to visit a number of places and get pictures from the views behind the dikes.
the landscape in general was almost endless, quiet and flat. i do not remember other places that are similar, just flat with a huge dike. standing with your back to the dike the landscape felt completely different from that which you would see standing with your nose to the dike. the dikes between friesland and groningen are high and long, built in the second half of last century.
standing in front of the dikes you feel humble, until you get to the top and have the landscape on both sides at your feet, standing at the foot of the dike looking away from the dike you feel safe with that dike in your back.
i enjoyed climbing these dikes at many places, feeling the wideness of the waddensee. now looking at the pictures i made, i see a different landscape, different views, different color than those i remember, making the pictures. i made similar pictures from the end of the roads in another dutch province, zeeland and will do so on the coasts of zuid-holland and noord-holland as well.
some days later i photographed ijmuiden harbour with h., which took many hours, driving and walking as much as we could around the ijmuiden harbour area, i.e. the amsterdam port area.
in the near future i hope to be able to do the rest of the dutch coastline. r and i visited and photografed part of the french coastline between the belgian border and the huge bridge in le havre and part of the rhein in the netherlands and germany.