Squeezed between Delft and Rotterdam, the Delfland is a low-land area where, in the Dutch Golden age, painters like Potter (famous for his painting “De Stier” (“The Bull”) and poets like Poot lived: an area rich with cattle, and wide views. Nowadays, the cattle is partly gone, and large parts of the countryside are preserved in a slightly “wild” format. The main function today is recreational, because of the close proximity of large cities of the Randstad conurbation: Rotterdam, Schiedam and Vlaardingen at the South, and Delft, and The Hague and surrounding towns in the North. Both ways, you’ll see the skyline of high buildings at the horizon, and the only really free views are West and East. Well, free, not entirely, because the once small villages in these directions grow fast, and occupy more and more of the open landscape. The path runs close to the urban boundaries twice – we tipped the edges in Vlaardingen en Delft, below many-strey flats; but elsewhere, it runs in the open area, along canals and old paths and dikes. Houses, however, are always near.
Despite these threats, the land is still a good place for many birds that live on the meadowland and water. Not that we did see many – it’s too late in the year for large numbers – but in spring, there will be many, no doubt.
I took some pictures, and the tracks are, as usual, available in Garmin, generic and CSV formats.
This is the final stretch of this regional path. The booklet covering it all and giving quite some detail on the land, it’s history and (possible) future, is published by NIVON. We used the second edition, 2004, ISBN 90 70601 85 0