Schagen Stolpen Route

This route along the Stolp farms bridges the distance between the West Frisian town of Schagen, surrounded by fertile clay, and the rough coastal area with its poor soil behind the dunes. This difference is also clearly visible in the two museum operations located along this route: the wealthy Stolp Vreeburg with a residential house on the Loet in Schagen and the small simple Dune farm Tante Jaantje in Callantsoog.

In the vicinity of Schagen, the farms are necessarily built on terps due to the many floods in the past. A number of terps have been connected over time, resulting in the construction of the West Frisian dike. The dike provided protection but also experienced many breaches. It lost its greatest significance as a water barrier due to the diking of the Zijpe (1599). On the land of this former sea arm, dozens of farms were established. Many Stolpen lie along both sides of the Great Canal, which was an important traffic artery in the past. Behind the farms begins the empty land; once primarily intended for livestock farming, but nowadays onion cultivation predominates. Stolpen also lie along the polder paths. The onion cultivation area extends up to the row of dunes. The dune farms are modest in size, but the farms originally intended for arable farming are large in scale, often with a double square. Here, the Stolpen no longer stand side by side. There is not only plenty of space behind the farms but also between them.