If someone asked you if you wanted to walk eighteen-plus kilometers in the dark through wind, hail, and rain, and warned that you wouldn’t be finished walking until close to one o’clock in the morning, what would be your response out of the options provided below?
A. You’re joking, right?
B. No thanks, but good luck with that!
C. Sure, that sounds like fun!
If you chose A or B, I would consider you to be a perfectly rational human being. Yet I chose option C, as did 650 others, who put on their walking shoes the evening of Saturday, March 23rd, 2024 and braved the crazy weather to walk at night. Before you think that there is a collective craziness spreading through the Netherlands, let me give you a bit more context.
We participated in Walking Wieringen by Night, a well-organized, festive event. The walk had a theme (Winter!), a set route that had been decorated in line with the winter theme, a number of stops along the way for refreshments and cheer, and a party at the finish line. People all over the Netherlands attend these evening walking events, and they usually sell out just a few hours after tickets go on sale.
“Ahh,” you might say. “Now I understand!” With this new information, you might even have chosen to participate as I did. Our assigned start time was 7:50 p.m, which meant there was little chance of missing the rain that would hit around 11:00 p.m. We arrived at the parking lot at 7:40 p.m, and parked in a soggy field by the dike. While we put on our jackets, strapped on our safety lights, and donned our mittens and wool beanies, we saw a line of walkers in brightly colored lights walking up the road to the top of the dike.
At the registration booth, a volunteer checked our tickets, then gave us each a lanyard with plastic flash light and showed us how to attach our tickets, which we would need to get stamped along the route to receive refreshments. “You’re the last group. If you hurry, you can make it. Enjoy your walk.”
We were surprised to hear that we were the last group, and a bit taken aback with the instructions to “hurry.” How does one hurry along an 18-kilometer walk through the darkness? Plus, we still had to rendezvous with Mariola, and once united, the five of us planned to stick together. This meant we would be walking at the pace of the slowest among us. Julie, like me, is tall and long legged, and we tend to walk briskly together. But I hadn’t walked with Ola, Mariola and Maria before, and all three of them were much shorter than Julie and me. I wondered how those short legs would fair on such a long journey. My concerns disappeared the moment we set off: short legs can also walk quickly!
We passed a spot with a few volunteers and they repeated what was soon to be the theme of our walk: “you are the last group. You need to hurry.”
It didn’t seem like such a bad thing to be the last or to be separated from the masses. We had the path to ourselves, and didn’t have the hassle of being jostled around in a crowd.
Yet a crowd does add a festive element, and it’s absence was palpable. It was as if we were participating in a half-marathon without encountering any other runners besides the friends we set out with.
We saw all of the festive decorations along the way, but there were long stretches of the route where an empty expanse of road stretched out in front of us, devoid of others.
Luckily, we had each other: a Canadian woman, an American woman, and three Polish women. We chatted incessantly, drifted into silence, chatted sporadically, commented on the surroundings, the decorations, all while our feet carried us along the route at a swift pace.
About five kilometers in, two cyclists in yellow vests stopped us and informed us we’d missed a turn. Luckily, we had only strayed about a half a kilometer from the route. They made sure we got back on the right path, and then stated the theme of our journey: “You’re the last of all the walkers, so you need to hurry.”
Although we were thankful for their help, our smiles were beginning to wear thin. Why was everyone rushing us? The tickets dangling on our lanyards expressly stated that we had until 2:00 a.m. to finish the route, and we were certainly walking at a good pace. The cyclists also informed us they were the “sweep up committee,” or the two assigned to cleaning up after the last of the participants.
We continued on into the countryside, and from a distance, we spotted a brightly lit booth on the side of the road, and could hear the pleasant sounds of people having fun together.
We soon reached the booth, and cheerful volunteers offered us little plastic shot glasses filled with Jäegermeister. I hadn’t had a shot of Jaegermeister since my college days, and the sickly sweet liquid seemed like the perfect elixer for this evening walk.
We soon reached a neighborhood and a group of locals partying in their front yard cheered us on (see video below). They wouldn’t be the last of the locals we encountered who had turned the event into a party. There were countless households festively lit, and bright lights and winter-themed decorations from skis and skates, to snowmen and bob sleds, appeared along the route.
Imagine the effort it must have taken to decorate 18 kilometers of paths and roadways!
Looks like fun, right? But hold on. Let me tell you a bit more. Although 800 people signed up, close to 150 of them canceled, and most of those cancelations were last minute due to inclement weather. And when I say inclement weather, I mean this!
We were barely half way when the downpour started. Around this time, I accidentally stepped into a puddle, and my left shoe was soaking wet. With continual downpours, it didn’t take long for my right shoe to get soaked as well. (I should have brought that second pair of socks I talked myself out of!)
We encountered many more festive volunteers along the trail who perked us up with tea and “oliebollen” (a bit like a ball of deep fried pancake), pretzels and juice, offers of more alcohol, and pleasant cheers of support.
We kept encountering the “street sweepers” on their bicycles, who repeatedly told us to hurry up. We all agreed that this prodding was not only rude, but it dampened the festivity of the event. It was quite surprising that none of us raised our middle fingers and told them off.
My sodden feet started to ache, and although we were still talkative, the stretches of silence began to grow longer as our legs grew wearier and the rain continued to pour. Then, around kilometer 12, we did what countless others have done while marching along: we broke into song. Given the winter theme, Julie and I started singing Christmas carols, and even harmonized on a few, including Silent Night. Maria, Ola and Mariola graced us with a Polish Christmas song, and our flagging energy was renewed.
We reached the museum in Stroe twenty minutes before midnight, and were able to step out of the rain and listen to a bit of late-night cheer. This was perhaps my favorite stop on the route solely for this woman’s performance.
We reached the finish line around 12:30 and joined approximately 100 others reveling under the shelter of a party tent. I arrived home around 1:30am, wet, cold, and beyond tired. My conservationist principles went out the window as I took a twenty-minute long shower, letting the water flow over me until my deathly white feet finally got their circulation back.
Thirty-six hours later, my once wobbly legs are back to normal and there’s a dog that needs to be walked. It’s time to slip on those tennis shoes and see if my feet are up for a much shorter challenge: Walking (a dog in) Schagen by Day.
kristininholland 