Ontspan

Cloudy gray skies, winds up to thirty knots (15 m/s), roaring stormy sea – perfect weather for a family outing? Apparently so. One Saturday afternoon, while lost in Den Haag, I accidentally got on the wrong tram, ending up in Scheveningen. Before carrying on to my intended destination, I decided to make the most of my topographical cretinism-related incident and pay homage to the Great North Sea. Arriving at the beach, I was awed by the tremendous might of the roaring sea, the great frothy waves crashing on the sandy shore, and the wind’s incredible power, carrying clouds of sand and dust and humming so loudly that it nearly blocked out the sound of the sea. Mesmerized by this Hemingwayesque scene, and despite the discomfort of sand painfully blasting my skin, I was drawn towards the water. The biggest surprise upon reaching the shoreline was the amount of people on the beach. As I struggled just to remain standing and keep sand out of my eyes, mouth and lungs, the locals frolicked about with their children and played catch with their dogs, while young and old couples alike strolled hand-in-hand along the beach, and a few fathers even tried to teach their teenagers to fly kites in the gale-force winds. Further down the beach I saw kite-surfers pirouetting in the waves, but at this point my face was so dry, raw and salty, my shoes so full of sand, that I decided to head back. Only on my return walk, with the wind in my back, could I literally relax and ‘lay back’ to take this picture of an idyllic Dutch family outing. Lesson of the day: never let a ‘bit’ of wind spoil your Saturday afternoon.