View from a dune

The girls' school is very close to the beach, in an area of The Hague, called Kijkduin.  Despite having been here for almost 18 months now, I had not properly visited this beach - I have a friend who often walks her dog there and her photos of the beach always looked beautiful.  Other friends talk of doing Nordic walking amongst the dunes and how lovely it is.  Therefore, I was very curious.

Last week, Grace and I took a left turn (towards the beach, home is to the right) and popped down to the shore.  It's true, the beach and dunes are beautiful (and I sometimes wish Blipfoto would let you post more than one image for each day - but that's for Facebook!!) but what I thought was interesting was the view some 10km on. 

In this picture, you can see the distant Hoek van Holland (Hook of Holland) and the port of Rotterdam with its smoking chimney stacks and cranes.  In fact, this picture makes it look quite distant - in reality it seems astonishingly close.  

Rotterdam is actually one of the largest ports in the world (the largest until 2004) - a fact that is inescapable whenever you are down by the water.  The beach is wide and gorgeous, the dunes are highly protected and you might be sitting, sipping a chilled glass of white wine at one of the shoreside cafes but then a tanker (or two or three) comes into view on the horizon, and to your left is a distant oil rig.  Yes, it's the North Sea and not the Caribbean.