Winter walk around Haarlem- Elswout

Walking against diabetes

Last september I started getting a bit more serious about walking. “Who? You???” Yes, that’s right, me, notorious couch potato, I know.

Changing your diet, doing more exercise, and taking medication are the main three ways to get your diabetes under control. Since I did not want to get even more strict with what I ate and drank and was trying to hold off the meds for a bit longer, more exercise seemed unavoidable. Yayks!

Walking as accidental exercise

So I don’t like exercising and sports (understatement of the year), but walking is one of the things I can do. I once saw it described as ‘accidental exercise’ and that’s what makes it acceptable and doable for me.

While walking you see a lot around you to keep you entertained. For an enthusiastic photographer as myself it also gives lots of photo opps. I try to do as much as I can by foot nowadays, both in Holland as in Singapore.

On top of that, in Singapore, I joined a walking group. That turns out to be a good thing. The ladies in the group are very nice, you can chat while walking and it stimulates you to actually make your miles.

Winter walk around Haarlem- Elswout

After three months in Singapore which I walked an average of 6,5 kilometers per day, I’m now back in wintery Holland and I find it hard to get out of the house. The weather has been bad. Lots of rain, wind, cold and even snow. Brrrr….I hate it.

But… on the few days that the weather was not too bad, I DID go for walks, often with a friend.

Posing on a bench in Elswout park.

Haarlem is located near the beach, dunes and forest, so it’s easy to find nice areas for a walk.

Winter close-ups

For this walk, my friend Saskya and I started from my house -no need to first take the car or anything- and walked to a gorgeous estate named Elswout. (I wrote about it once before already.)

First you pass through some pretty neighborhoods. Haarlem is surrounded by rich neighborhoods and villages, like Bloemendaal, Aerdenhout and Overveen. The streets in those suburbs are often quiet and wide, lined with leafy trees and impressive villas.

It’s pleasant to walk there and admire the architecture and nature.

Typical autumn-winter leafs.

Some colours remain in winter.

Female Pinochio bird house. On the other side of the door is a male version. Cute, right?

Practising for après-ski

Halfway between my house and Elswout is a popular hangout, named De Stinkende Emmer, translated as the Smelly Bucket. The name has an interesting origin. (read more).

The url in ‘read more’ refers to a text in Dutch, I realise now, so I better give a short translation in english here. Well, in the olden days, the wife of fishermen from Zandvoort -hundreds every day- brought the daily catch to Haarlem via a sandy trail. After selling their fresh fish in Haarlem, they walked back home and made a pitstop at this place, leaving their dirty, smelly fish buckets outside until they continued their walk to Zandvoort.

Recently the name Smelly Bucket has been replaced by the name ‘t Wapen van Kennemerland, but many people still call it Stinkende Emmer.

Beautiful advertisement for gin in a stained glass window.

We took a break there and had a cappuccino on the terrace outside, wrapped in warm blankets, admiring the sunset.

The building you see far away is the entrance gate to Elswout park.

In december I join Frits and his kids on a vacation in Austria where they are going for skiing and snowboarding. I don’t do skiing, but I CAN do apres-ski, and here I’m practising that, see? Hard work! Hahaha…

Elswout park and estate

Elswout has a rich and interesting history (read more).

It’s a large park now, with meadows, forests, lakes, follies, a beautiful house, an orangerie, sheep and deer.

These pictures give you an idea:

The main building at Elswout. It’s being renovated.

So this is the main building; the mansion. But I have to be honest with you: it is not floating in a lake, like some of the palaces in Rajasthan are. In reality, the grounds around it are -at the moment- a construction site. It looks very messy. Now I just learned a thing or two about photo-editing. So I took this opportunity to experiment and try out a few of the more creative editing techniques that I learned. This is the result.

I love this lane with those characteristic trees.

Side view of the Orangerie. It’s a beautiful, huge glass house, used for weddings and open for the public on sunday’s for drinks and a snack.

One of the pretty deer at Elswout.

So there you have it; proof that I walk in winter too.

How about you? Do you walk as enthusiastically in winter as in summer?