Play in the mud on the Netherland’s north coast

 CLOSER LOOK: Binoculars help visitors get a better view of the herd of seals bobbing playfully nearby. Right: AN EXPANSE OF MUD: The Dutch may not have mountains, but they sure have a lot of mud.

By Andrea Kitay

We’d been trudging across the mud flats at low tide for about 20 minutes with only the gentle crunch of footsteps when a loud sucking sound sliced the air. In almost perfect unison I lurched forward into the oyster-coloured mud with a yip. Elbows forward and hands skyward to protect an assortment of cameras, a rush of squishy, sulfury mud met me halfway, cushioning my fall and releasing fumes that would knock over a camel.

“Good Lord, what is that stench?” muttered my daughter, grasping at my hands for the cameras.

“A little help, please?” I groaned. Stuck like an unbalanced tripod in the mud, I felt the sock on my right foot dangling from my toes, which were now missing a boot. I’d proudly dragged my heavy duty, Maine-built mud boots to the ends of the earth for this little encounter with nature, and apparently the Dutch wetlands wished to keep one.

“You’ll have to lace up tighter,” one of our guides, Nico, implored. “The shells will destroy your feet.”

It turns out a better footwear choice for a day of mud walking, or wadlopen, in Dutch, would have been dive booties. But in no mood to be barefoot for a trek to nowhere, I hitched up my sock and plied my boot from the muck, shoving my foot deep into its gloppy depths.

So much for staying dry.

Wadlopen is a venerable past time in the Wadden Sea shallows stretching between the mainland and the Frisian Islands on Holland’s north coast, where, twice a day at low tide, both sand and mudflats are exposed. This makes the area ripe for tromping around in and those inventive Dutch have parlayed it into a wet, sloppy day trip.

Billed as an eco-tour-style adventure called “The Ramble” by the outfitter Djikstra Wadlooptochten, our meet-up point was the picturesque village of Pieterburen.

Here, we found our guides Johan and Nico huddled over a map plotting the day’s route and tides tables.

Just two of dozens of guides leading both half- and full-day trips out onto the mud flats, they are a necessity required by the Dutch government for what finally seems obvious once we’re out on the sea bed: dense fog, strong tidal currents and disorientation that pose a potential threat to newbies.

Less than a mile from the dike where we start hiking, the sleepy village is wadlopen’s unofficial welcome wagon.

In fact, a dizzying array of supporting activities have sprung up around the simple act of playing in the mud. From the Apres-wadlopen bar to a movie of the Wadden Sea with apple pie to a visit to the seal sanctuary, the town has demonstrated a surprising level of capitalism while sustaining a typically Dutch low-key profile. Home base was the nearby university town of Groningen (pronounced Grun’n), the cultural heart of this northern province with the same name. Here, the cafe culture is as vibrant as any in more celebrated climes further south. Bikes rule the road, and equal numbers of university students as swanky seniors wile away the afternoon sipping macchiatos and people-watching in sprawling outdoor cafes.

In a spectacular show of ocean-to-table, we lingered over a delightful meal of the same crab and mussels we’d soon be stepping around at the hip little restaurant Brusells Lof.

Wadlopen as an organised activity began tenuously, with exploratory expeditions to the Frisian Islands beginning in the late 1930s. But it is arguably Hylke Dijkstra’s pioneering 12-mile winter trek of 1963 across the ice to Schiermonnikoog that established it as a bona fide Dutch pastime. Today, roughly 35,000 people make either the half-day nature walk or the full day trek to the islands. It would take more than half a century from that first exploratory walk before the Wadden Sea would be recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2009, a designation that confirms its vital role as one of the world’s largest and most important migratory bird areas. With 10 million to 12 million birds passing through annually, roughly 6 million can be present at the same time on the vast stretch of water whose boundaries bump the coasts of Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.

Our little joust with nature would take us across slushy mud flats, over sand banks teeming with drying shells and through 3-foot deep gullies, with no goal other than a day tromping in the mud.

Despite my early fumble, the hike out from the relatively new dike protecting the mainland from powerful tidal surges was pleasant, with Johan stopping here and there to point out yet another ecological wonder on ground littered with mussels, oysters and crabs.

It turns out the extreme environment has created conditions unique enough to allow edible plants such as sea lavender and sea aster to grow in abundance in the shoreline’s grassy banks.

According to Johan, these are not ordinary garden plants. The adaptation to a salt water environment makes them unsuitable for a garden, much the way a garden plant wouldn’t tolerate the harsh conditions of the Wadden seashore.

It took about an hour to lose the view of the dike. Spinning in a 360-degree circle, I realised how disorienting the shallows would be with no guide. In fact, if it weren’t for the deep footprints we left behind there were no reference points to orient one’s self. Within a few hours they, too, would be gone.

A shiny mirage hovered about 50 yards in front of me and out of reach for most of the hike, adding to a sense of otherworldliness. Not a fan of panic, I plotted worst-case scenarios as I marched, landing on the simple strategy of disgorging most of my clothes and gear for the float back to shore. After a few miles, we began a wide sweep that would briefly take us in view of the German island Borkum, when Johan piped up.

“Look!” he fairly shouted, shoving his enormous walking stick towards a tiny rivulet in the mud. “What do you see?” Indeed, the small but insistent stream of water was working its way back in the opposite direction, pushing through the mud in what would turn into a sort of mini-delta over the five minutes we stood chattering over it.

“This is nature’s notice the tide has turned,” Johan told us excitedly, as if this were a new revelation for him also.

As we stood gaping admiringly at this miraculous bit of news, Johan explained that where we stood would not only be well submerged in several hours time, but it would also be deep enough for small fishing boats to harvest the small shrimp lurking in the gullies around us.

By way of example, he reached back, dipped his net into one and brought up a gob of tiny shrimp.

On the long tromp back, I mused over the vast, unrelenting barrenness of the landscape. I’d been close to the end of the world, but this felt more like it. There was something wonderfully calm about it all, and the arrival of a bevy of curious seals, bobbing and dipping as they followed us at a distance, became a pleasant distraction. The clouds dissipated while I wasn’t looking, leaving a faded blue stretching down to the horizon. While the autumn sun warmed my now-uncovered arms, the tepid 64-degree water that originated in the frigid North Sea now warmed my legs.

Despite giving my boots a repeated soaking on my return home, the pungent stench of poorly oxygenated mud permeated even its laces, forcing me to offer them up to the garbage gods. In the end, the Wad had won. — MCT