The fallow deer
A herd close by and used to people.
Huhu Uet — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Rijksmuseum — CC0 · Sebastiaan ter Burg from Utrecht, The Netherlands — CC BY 2.0 · Sebastiaan ter Burg from Utrecht, The Netherlands — CC BY 2.0
Both are adjacent coastal dunes, but their rules differ entirely. Zuid-Kennemerland is a free national park where bicycles and leashed dogs are allowed and which ends at a public beach. The water dunes are an operational reserve with a ticket, banning bicycles and dogs outright and requiring you to stay on the paths — and in exchange offering deeper quiet and closer wildlife, the deer especially. For a quiet walk: the water dunes. For cycling and the beach: Zuid-Kennemerland.
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The Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen is a nature reserve south of Zandvoort, but it was created for a reason with nothing to do with nature: purifying drinking water for the city of Amsterdam, which it has done since 1853 and still does. The engineering idea is simple and elegant. Water is pumped from the Rhine into open channels between the dunes, seeps slowly through the sand layers that filter it naturally over weeks, and is then collected and treated. This solved Amsterdam's nineteenth-century cholera crisis, and it remains part of the city's supply. The side effect is one of the richest nature reserves in the Netherlands: dunes, woods and clear channels, with a large herd of fallow deer that can be seen close up because they are used to people. Entry is by a cheap day ticket, and the rules are strict to protect the water: no dogs, no bicycles, no leaving the paths.
A herd close by and used to people.
Rhine water seeping slowly through the dunes.
Zandvoortselaan, 2114 Vogelenzang