Landelijk Noord (Durgerdam, Ransdorp, Holysloot, Zunderdorp)

Neighborhood · Amsterdam-Noord (Durgerdam / Ransdorp / Holysloot)Amsterdam,Netherlands

Four dike villages of drained peat inside Amsterdam's own boundary, where the sea sits high on one side of the road and cows graze below.

Landelijk Noord is the part of Amsterdam that is still farmland. Durgerdam, Ransdorp, Holysloot and Zunderdorp are dike villages in the peat country north-east of the IJ, inside the city boundary. Stand on the Durgerdammerdijk and the IJmeer is close to the top of the dike on one side, while the polder on the other side lies below it, with cows on it. Durgerdam is one row of low wooden houses along the old sea dike. The ground here is drained peat, and by about 1300 the fields had sunk too low for a grain crop. The farmers put cattle on the grass instead and never took them off. The villages asked to be taken into Amsterdam on 1 January 1921, because they were poor. The First World War had ended their trade, a storm surge had flooded Waterland in 1916, and the fishermen could see that the Zuiderzee was about to be closed off from the sea. It was closed in 1932. So the villages you ride between now are places that stopped fishing, stopped growing grain, and kept the cows.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Come between March and June for the meadow birds — Godwits, lapwings and redshanks nest in these fields, and you hear them before you see them, mostly from the dike.
Walk on the dike facing the traffic — The road along the top is one car wide with no pavement and no verge, and delivery vans use it at speed.
Nothing out here charges anything and almost nothing is open — Two cafes in Durgerdam are the whole supply; Ransdorp, Holysloot and Zunderdorp have no shop between them.
Treat it as one loop, not four stops — The villages sit within a few kilometres of each other on narrow lanes, and a bicycle covers all four in an afternoon.
Stay off the grass in spring — The fields are nesting ground and the farmers mow around the nests, so a walker crossing a meadow does real damage.

Things to do

1
Stand on the dike at Durgerdam and turn round
Put yourself on the road by the village church and look east: open water, close to the level of your feet. Then turn and look west: grass, ditches and cows, clearly lower than the water behind you. The dike you are standing on is the only thing between them.
2
Ride to the end of the road at Holysloot
Follow the single street through the village until it simply stops. There is a church, a village hall and a few hundred people, and then grass. You are still inside the Amsterdam city boundary here, and there is no city in view in any direction.