Netherlands Guide
Noord-Holland
Texel
Stuck out in the Waddenzee, Texel (pronounced "tessel") is the westernmost of the string of islands that band the northern coast of the Netherlands. Some 25km long and up to 9km wide, Texel is mostly reclaimed polder, a flattened landscape of green pasture land dotted with chunks of woodland, speckled with small villages and protected in the east by long sea defences. The west coast boasts a magnificent sandy beach that stretches from one end of the island to the other. Behind the beach, a belt of sand dunes widens as it approaches both ends of the island. In the north it spreads out into two nature reserves – De Muy and De Slufter – and the latter incorporates Texel's finest scenery in De Slufter, a tidal inlet where a deep cove of salt marsh, lagoon and dune has been left beyond the sea defences exposed to the willfulness of the ocean. On the whole, the island's villages are rather dull, with the notable exception of the hamlet of Den Hoorn, a leafy little place whose rustic cottages, some of which date back to the eighteenth century, string along the main street, Herenstraat, and out towards the dunes, just 2km away to the west.