During the first weekend of August, we decided to visit the Dutch island Texel (one of my favorite places in the Netherlands! See here for example). And since we’re going camping in Australia this autumn, I thought it would be a good idea to test the tent and all other equipment at least once before flying to the other side of the world.

I normally prefer small campsites, but this time we went to a HUGE one called Kogerstrand, in De Koog. The reason I chose it, despite its size (and the rather high cost), is that it’s located right next to the beach in the dunes. Cars have to park at a parking lot, and tent spots are secluded spaces within the dunes. It was really nice! This was our little spot…

The great thing about this campsite is that we were literally 100 m from the beach. So when the sunset started to look rather nice, I grabbed my camera bag and went to the beach…

It was so beautiful, really a magical sunset. This little girl just ran in front of my camera while I was taking a photo and I love the result 🙂

The reflections in the sand almost looked like a painting…

The next day we rented bikes and we decided to cycle all around the island. Just outside De Koog we saw a lot of purple heather, so pretty! So we stopped for some photos…

Cars are allowed on Texel, but almost all tourists either bring their own bike or rent bikes. It makes for a really nice atmosphere I think, with lots of people cycling.

Panorama of the purple heather in the dunes…

We cycled to the north tip of the island, where the Eierland Lighthouse is located.

We walked the path up to the lighthouse…

You can see the huge beach on the left here.

I decided to climb the lighthouse for a better view. I had never done that before. It was so worth it! It was a beautiful day and the huge beach at the north tip of Texel looks really impressive from above.

We had lunch at the beach restaurant you can see on the far left in the photo above. That’s the ultimate holiday feeling for me: having a meal on the beach 🙂

The clouds were really pretty so I took lots of photos of the lighthouse with the clouds!

The lighthouse was built in 1863, but it suffered heavy damage during the Second World War. To repair the damages, they built another wall around the inner one.

Sorry, too many photos of the lighthouse 😉

We continued our bike trip, and started cycling south again. On Texel, it has become common to see Eurasian Spoonbills. They are such pretty bird and I still find them quite exotic!

Michiel checking out the spoonbill (lepelaar in Dutch)

Texel idylle: a bikepath, a bike, sheep and lots of flowers 🙂

We stopped for lunch in Oosterend, a really pretty village built around a church.

The church of Oosterend…

The harbour at Oudeschild…

The wind was strong that day, and we got really tired of cycling against the wind (especially me). Friends of Michiel were also staying on Texel with their children, so we met them at a beach restaurant and had a nice break in the sun.

In the evening we went for dinner at the beach restaurant next to our campsite. Some rain showers were passing and the sunset looked rather stormy…

During dinner I suddenly noticed beautiful light outside, so I excused myself and ran out with my camera. I couldn’t believe my luck: a sunset rainbow!

I managed to take a panorama of the rainbow over the row of beach huts 🙂

The light was really special that evening, it almost seemed unreal!

The beach restaurant where we had dinner…

The next day we decided to go for a walk in the southern part of Texel, quite close to the ferry that we were taking back to the mainland later that day. We walked through an area with lots of geese, and pretty lakes…

I loved the views and the clouds that day!

So many geese!

Here too we found purple flowering heather. A really pretty walk!

More geese, and pretty clouds 🙂

We stopped at another beach restaurant for lunch, and then walked back to the car through the dunes. One last photo of the pretty views….

We had a great time on Texel, and a successful testing of our camping equipment. It was fun to go just for the weekend, it really felt like a mini holiday 🙂