Paddling through Giethoorn, Venice of the Netherlands

Centrum of Giethoorn, Netherlands

Giethoorn is an adorable and quaint town way up north in the Netherlands - almost in Friesland. As you can see in the photo above, it's a dense network of channels, footbridges (180!), and thatch-roofed houses that can often only be reached by boat or on foot. The locals (about 3000 of them) travel over their personal bridges and on punters (boats you push along with a stick, like in Venice). I'd visited this town a few times before (it's a 15 minute bike ride from HJ's parents' house) but never floated along its canals. Until now!

The kayaking part

We rented a couple single kayaks from Bed & Boat Mol Groenewegen, for 15€/boat/day (though the owner seemed to be considering a rate hike). Decent recreational boats - nothing fancy. From there we paddled up through the town, passing under the raised bridges and admiring the adorable houses. We ended up paddling a 20km loop, visiting the nearby town of Dwarsgracht, stopping for lunch at a canalside cafe, and paddling across the Beulakerwijde (a big lake). We encountered some pretty impressive waves on the lake, thanks to a steady Dutch wind. HJ handled his first waves well, much to my delight. -- I only realized half way across the lake (wind at our backs, waves getting bigger) that we really weren't prepared for capsizing - no bulkheads or bilge pumps or wetsuits. We saw quite a few fully equipped sea kayaks during our trip.

The canals are quite narrow; often only one boat wide. We ran into a major traffic jam upon returning to Giethoorn, but luckily our little kayaks could squeeze by my of the amused boaters waiting in line. 

For some reason Giethoorn is a Chinese tourist magnet. Many people in Belgium have never heard of it, but over 200,000 Chinese tourists visit it every year.  This link gives some more fun info about the houses, history, and farming culture in Giethoorn. 

While it hasn't happened recently (thanks to climate change), the canals sometimes freeze in the winter, and the region becomes an ice skating mecca. You can skate continuously for hundreds of kilometers down different channels and lakes. There is a famous 200km skating race, called the Elfstedentocht (eleven city's tour), that is organized when the ice freezes (most recent race was in 1997). The race covers a good portion of northern Netherlands, and nearly 20,000 people take part! 

There are so many kayaking opportunities in this area (destinations AND rental shops) - I'm already looking forward to my next visit. :)

The Water Nerd Part

The region was historically used for peat-mining, which involves draining and stripping off the top layer of dense, nutrient dense wetland soil. The linear parallel canals that can be seen in aerial photos are a result of this process - a canal would be dug by removing the peat and laying it on the adjacent ribbons of land to dry. Side-note: peat-mining is an environmentally damaging process that destroys valuable wetland habitat and releases huge amounts of CO2 (built up in the wetland over 10s of 1000s of years) into the atmosphere, contributing around 6% of global carbon emissions (read more at: http://thebluecarboninitiative.org/). Today, peat extraction has stopped (as far as I can tell) and given way to annual reed cutting, in which reed is harvested in the fall, left to dry, and used for making the typical thatch roofs found on most of the houses. 

Pictures (click to enlarge)

Here's a video of a little duckling that followed us for about 10 minutes. This was recorded when I pulled over to see if it was, in fact, following us. It quickly caught up and attempted to get in my boat... 

Date:  Saturday, May 14th, 2016
Distance: 21 km (13 miles)
Duration: 6 hours (including a break for lunch)