We visited the island (and yacht harbour) of Terschelling, it was nice. Here are some photos and impressions ...
Long harbour
The main harbour is rather long ... this area is not for pleasure crafts, except for one area for traditional dutch flat-bottom ships and some few boats with special permissions. There are two ferries going to Harlingen, one fast catamaran and a bigger ferry with space for cars. Some fishing boats and other activity.
Here are some of the flat-bottomed ships, photo taken just as we were leaving. There was really a lot of ships when we arrived late in the evening. The amounts of ships there in the daytime was less impressive.
There is also a storage space for bouys on land. As the mud dunes and sand banks are always moving, they need to maintain the markings quite often. I wonder if bouys are lost and needs to be replaced, or they pick up outdated bouys, repaint tem and store them on land before putting them out again? When we arrived in the darkness the evening before, the bouys were blinking on land, it was quite an amazing sight. The big lighthouse in the middle of the town is a sweeping lighthouse, and it was also throwing light all over the harbour. Day and night are two very different things, it's often nice to be able to experience both when visiting some place.
Town centre
The town centre was charming, though my expectations were probably too high - our neighbour yesterday said it looked like it hadn't changed for hundreds of years. I think it looked more like just any commercial tourist centre. When we arrived a bit earlier it was a long queue for the bicycle rent. It seems like one really need a bike to enjoy Terschelling properly. My wife went out biking a bit with her Brompton, and our youngest daughter on the trailer.
In the center of the town there is the lighthouse, it's quite big and nice.
Northern sea beach
Unfortunately I have no pictures ... my wife was biking there, and she reports it was fantastic! A bit like some of the French beaches facing the Atlantic ocean.
Wadden sea beach
Lots of people were bathing inside the yacht harbour - despite signs explicitly telling it's forbidden. I never go bathing in yacht harbours ... for one thing it can be dangerous, not only due to boat traffic, but also due to the risk of electricity leakages. Well, I guess those dangers are insignificant ... but there is another reason as well, I think it's disgusting. The water is usually not that clean inside boat harbours ... think of it, all the boats have poisonous paint on the hull to prevent getting overgrown with aquaric life. Pretty much all of the boats let greywater go directly into the harbour ... dirty water after doing dishes, shower water, etc. Some boats may also release blackwater ... either by accident, due to overfilled holding tanks, or simply because the boat has toilets with outlet diretly to the sea, without a holding tank. In addition there is sometimes some oil spills, diesel spills or similar. With such a high density of boats it just cannot be good. I guess there normally aren't that many people bathing ... but it was really hot, and it was also slightly non-trivial to go bathing in the Wadden sea on low water.
The sand/mud here at Terschelling was very different from the sand/mud at Cuxhaven - and there were different types of sand as well, as can be seen here.
The sand here, a bit wet, quite much "alive", and a bit smelly, it's certainly not as attractive as the sand on a beaches facing the north sea - but for building sand castles it's just perfect!
I did want to go bathing indeed ... and it seemed possible, just that one first had to get out to this island.
On the way there I encountered some black very liquid and not so fresh-smelling mud under the sand. It was slippery as well, just luck that I didn't fall. I gave up on my first attempt to get to the island.
A bit later, some lady tried going the same route as me - but she was a bit more insistent. It's probably not much visible, but she got the black mud all up to high on her thights before she gave up and tried getting back again.
The solution was to go a bit further to the left and cross there - it was almost no black mud at all there. I got out with water to my stomach, it was really refreshing to just stand there in the water and let it flow around my body. I didn't do swimming as I still had my t-shirt on (protecting my sunburnt shoulders and back against the sun) and anyway nowhere to put it). Eventually the sand castle came to completion.
The hill and the yacht harbour
Directly behind the yacht harbour and Wadden sea beach there was a hill. I imagined The Netherlands to be perfectly flat, but here is the exception! Of course I love climbing hills to get some better view. (that's an experience I probably will miss, once we all get our own personal drones flying around taking pictures from above wherever we go). Here is the yacht harbour and my son on the beach. I found the view rather amazing as one could study the geometry of the mud dunes and banks from there.
... the view towards the left looks like this ...
I took some photos of the backside also, but not so interessting, just a car road and some trees.
I will not write a separate review-post for this harbour. I would definitively stay by anchor if I'm to get back here. Nothing bad at all to say about the harbour or the facilities ... except that it's too popular, hence it's overfilled and they have relatively high prices as well - I paid more than EUR 40 for the stay. Here are two boats wanting to stay at the outside of a long row with boat:
Selected photos available in original quality on IPFS QmaG3yJ3mFCCBurfdASikJQDUP2DF9xyVTB5np1NZBCMVR. All photos taken available in original quality on IPFS QmWHqfafkJHvinTDRCMEFVzvEq6sUGa4ZeQ7bgBJ6ziCAA. License: CC BY-SA 4.0