Giethoorn: A Gentle Guide to the Dutch Village Without Roads

There is a moment in Giethoorn that most visitors never see. It happens at around half past eight in the morning, before the first tour boats are unlocked, when the canals lie perfectly still and the only sound is a blackbird somewhere behind a thatched roof. The village looks exactly as it does in the photographs — and it is almost empty.

Giethoorn sits in the north-west corner of Overijssel, about 5 km (3 miles) south-west of the little town of Steenwijk, in a landscape of reed beds and shallow lakes left behind by centuries of peat digging. Roughly 2,800 people live here. In the old heart of the village there are no roads at all: houses stand on small islands, linked by something like 176 wooden footbridges, and the postman has traditionally come by boat.

It is famous, and yes, it can be busy. But Giethoorn is one of those rare places where the crowds keep office hours. Arrive early, or stay the night, and you get the version of the village that people fall in love with. This guide is written around that simple idea.

A little history

Giethoorn's story begins in the soil. This was wet, boggy land, and the earliest written mentions of the settlement go back to the thirteenth century, when colonists are said to have settled on the peat — reputedly the first village in the Netherlands built on such ground.

The name itself is wrapped in local legend. Giethoorn is usually translated as "goat horn", and villagers have long told visitors that the first settlers found great quantities of goat horns in the ground, the remains of animals drowned in a medieval flood. It is a story to enjoy rather than to swear by.

What is certain is that peat made the village. For centuries people here cut and dried peat as fuel, and they needed a way to move it. From around the sixteenth century they dug narrow channels, and over generations those channels were widened, linked and multiplied until the village was threaded with water. The digging also hollowed out the countryside: the lakes that now surround Giethoorn are, in large part, holes left by people with spades.

For a long time this remained a quiet working community of peat cutters, fishermen and reed harvesters. Fame arrived in 1958, when the Dutch director Bert Haanstra filmed his comedy Fanfare here. The film was a great success at home, the outside world noticed the village with the little bridges, and the nickname "Venice of the North" has stuck ever since — a comparison Giethoorn does not really need, since it looks like nowhere else.

A boatbuilder's shop on one of Giethoorn's water channels — boats have always been the local transport.

What to see

Giethoorn is not a place of monuments. It is a place of one long walk, one slow boat ride and a few small, honest museums. Half a day covers the essentials; a full day lets you do them without hurrying.

The Binnenpad

The Binnenpad is the heart of the visit: a flat footpath that runs along the old village canal, past thatched farmhouses, clipped gardens, little white footbridges and water so clear you can watch the ducks paddling. It is a stroll rather than a hike, and benches and café terraces appear regularly. Walking it in one direction and returning by boat is a sensible plan if you would rather not do the whole distance twice.

A boat on the canals

There are three ways onto the water. Guided tours in covered boats last around an hour and require nothing of you but a seat and a camera. "Whisper boats" — small, silent electric boats with a steering wheel — can be hired by the hour and need no licence or experience; a member of staff shows you the controls, and the speed is slower than a walking pace. Most romantic of all is the punter, the traditional flat-bottomed village boat, which can be hired with a boatman to pole you along.

If you are at all unsure about stepping into a boat unaided, ask about the covered tour boats or about operators with low, wide entrances. Several companies in the village are used to helping less steady passengers aboard, and some have boats fitted for wheelchairs.

Museum Giethoorn 't Olde Maat Uus

This old village farmhouse on the canal is the one museum we would not skip. Furnished as it would have been a century or so ago, with a fisherman's house and a boathouse in the yard, it tells the story of peat digging, flooding and daily life through the voices of the people who lived it. It gives the pretty canals outside a weight they otherwise lack.

The small collections

Giethoorn has a handful of endearingly specific little museums: a gemstone, mineral and fossil collection; a shell gallery; and a barn full of vintage cars, motorcycles and carriages. None takes long, and all are welcome shelter in Dutch weather.

The lakes and reed lands

East of the village lies the Bovenwijde, a broad shallow lake, and beyond it the wetlands of the Weerribben-Wieden National Park — a vast landscape of reed beds, peat bog and open water that is home to otters, marsh harriers and purple herons. Even a short boat trip to the edge of the reeds shows you why the village exists at all.

Canals take the place of streets in the old part of Giethoorn.

The quiet hours

Here is the single piece of advice that changes a visit to Giethoorn. The village is at its busiest roughly between late morning and mid-afternoon, when coaches and day trips from Amsterdam arrive. Before and after that window, it is a different place entirely.

That gives you two good strategies.

The first is to come early. Arrive by around nine in the morning and you will have an hour or two of mirror-still canals, mist in spring and autumn, and paths to yourself. Walk the Binnenpad first, take your boat trip before the water gets busy, and spend the crowded middle of the day in a museum or over a long lunch.

The second, and our favourite, is to sleep here. There are small hotels, bed and breakfasts and holiday cottages along and near the Binnenpad, and guests get the two ends of the day for free: a village emptying out in the late afternoon, lamplight on the water in the evening, and breakfast before anyone else arrives. One night turns Giethoorn from a photo stop into a memory.

It also removes the day-tripper's biggest problem, which is the long return journey by train and bus at the end of a tiring day on your feet.

A thatched house in Giethoorn, the village's characteristic building style.

A day trip nearby

If you have a second day, the surrounding Kop van Overijssel rewards you without demanding much travel.

Blokzijl is the obvious choice: a former Zuiderzee harbour town roughly 10 km (6 miles) from Giethoorn, about 15–20 minutes by car and reachable by local bus with a change at Steenwijk. Its little harbour, lock and seventeenth-century merchants' houses feel like a working Dutch town rather than a visitor attraction, and the whole centre is small, flat and walkable.

Steenwijk, around 15 minutes away and the railway gateway to the village, has a pleasant old centre, a weekly market and ordinary Dutch shops — useful if you have been in boat queues all morning.

For nature, the visitor centres of the Weerribben-Wieden National Park lie within a short drive and offer flat, well-made walking trails, bird hides and boat hire in calmer water than the village canals.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

• The ground is flat, which is the good news. There are no hills, no steep streets and no long climbs anywhere in Giethoorn or the countryside around it.
• The bridges are the real test. The village's many wooden footbridges are humpbacked, so you are constantly going up and down a short slope. Most have handrails; some of the narrower plank bridges on side paths do not, and a few are too narrow for two people side by side. Take them slowly and use a stick if you normally would.
• The Binnenpad is narrow and shared with cyclists. Keep to one side, and don't be startled by a bell behind you. On a busy afternoon it can feel crowded; in the early morning it feels like a private garden path.
• Walking distances add up. The village strings out along its canals, so a full there-and-back walk is longer than it looks on a map. Plan to return by boat, or walk one half one day and the other half the next.
• Getting in and out of a boat is the main practical hurdle. Covered tour boats are generally the easiest; ask at the jetty and say plainly that you would like help stepping aboard. Operators here do this all day long.
• No cars in the old centre. Visitor car parks are at the edge of the village, so there is always a walk at the start. If mobility is limited, choose accommodation on or very near the Binnenpad and ask the owner about the nearest drop-off point before you book.
• Dress for water and wind. It is cool and breezy on the canals even on warm days, and Dutch rain arrives without consultation. A light waterproof and a layer you can add while sitting still are more useful than anything else in your bag.
• Facilities are concentrated. Cafés, toilets and benches cluster around the centre of the village and thin out at the ends of the path — worth knowing before you set off for the far bridge.
• Avoid July, August, weekends and public holidays if you can. The village is small, and numbers show.

Visitors exploring the channels of Giethoorn by boat.

What to eat

This is honest, unfussy Dutch food, and it suits a day spent outdoors.

Pannenkoeken — large, thin Dutch pancakes — are the local institution, served sweet with syrup or apple, or savoury with bacon and cheese, and Giethoorn has pancake houses with terraces right on the canal. Poffertjes, the small puffy pancakes dusted with icing sugar, come with afternoon coffee.

Because the village grew up among lakes and reed beds, fish belongs on the table. Smoked eel is the traditional delicacy of these waters, and you will also find pike-perch and perch, usually pan-fried and served simply with potatoes and vegetables.

For lunch, nothing beats an uitsmijter — fried eggs on bread with ham or cheese — or a bowl of thick erwtensoep, the split pea soup that Dutch families eat in cold weather and which is exactly right after an hour on the water. With your coffee, ask for appelgebak met slagroom, apple tart with whipped cream.

Giethoorn also has a long-established, highly regarded fine-dining restaurant for anyone who would like one special, slow evening meal. Book well ahead, and keep the evening free afterwards for a walk along the dark canals.

Getting there

Our verdict

Giethoorn has been photographed so often that it is easy to arrive braced for disappointment. Go at the wrong hour on an August Saturday and you may find it: a narrow path, too many people, a queue at the jetty.

Go gently, though, and it is lovely. The village is flat, compact and genuinely beautiful, the boats are slow and silent, the museums are modest and warm, and the surrounding reed lands are among the finest quiet landscapes in the Netherlands. Few places of this fame ask so little of your legs — and few reward an early alarm clock so completely.

Our advice, in one line: book a room in the village, let the day trips come and go, and keep the first and last hours of the day for yourself.

One of the canals that give Giethoorn its nickname, the Dutch Venice.

“Come before the boats wake, when the canals still hold the whole village upside down.”

Photo credits

• Giethoorn landscape: Autochess, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Giethoorn Netherlands Channels-and-houses-of-Giethoorn-01: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Giethoorn Netherlands flckr03: Bert Knot, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Giethoorn Netherlands Channels-and-houses-of-Giethoorn-10: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Giethoorn Netherlands Channels-and-houses-of-Giethoorn-05: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Giethoorn Canal 3: KarelJanda, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons