Two hundred and fifty years of post across the beach

You cycle along the Postweg, beside the mudflats, with the planted strips of woodland on your right. At the end stands the Posthuys, today an inn where you drink a beer with a view across the plains.

The name is not decorative. For two and a half centuries, this building was the terminus of one of the most remarkable postal routes the Netherlands has known — and the reason the Postweg bears its name.

Why Amsterdam sent post to a sand plain

To understand why post had to come here, you need to picture the map of the Golden Age. No Afsluitdijk, no Noordzeekanaal. Anyone wishing to reach the sea from Amsterdam sailed across the Zuiderzee to the sea inlet between Vlieland and Terschelling: the Vlie. The Rede van Vlieland was therefore one of the most important anchorages in the country. Hundreds of ships lay there waiting for the right wind for the voyage to the Baltic, where the grain and timber came from.

Ships that are waiting need orders. A trading house in Amsterdam wanted to know which ships were moored there, with what cargo, and wanted to be able to send instructions to its captain before he departed. In an era when everything went by letter, this was not a luxury but the core of the business.

From 1668, there were paid postal services between Amsterdam and Texel. A little over a century later, the link was extended to Vlieland and given a name: the Vliepost. In 1805, a regular postal boat service to Terschelling was added as well.

The route, step by step

In Amsterdam, the post was placed into the saddlebag of a postilion, a mounted courier. He rode overland via Purmerend and Schagen to Den Helder. There, a post boatman took over to Oudeschild on Texel, where the captains at the Texel roadstead received their orders. A Texel postilion carried the remainder — the post for Vlieland and Terschelling — across the island to the roadstead of Eierland. And there, a postvlet lay ready to sail across the Eierlandse Gat to Vlieland.

On the other side of that water, the Vlieland section began. The island's postilion lived in the Posthuys, right at the narrowest point of the island — five hundred metres between the mudflats and the North Sea. Before daybreak, he set off with horse and cart, riding eight kilometres onto the Vliehors to meet the boat from Texel.

Eight kilometres across a barren sand plain, in the dark. In winter, these were harsh journeys. The beacons were clumps of marram grass and small wooden posts, and during storms or dense fog, they disappeared completely from view.

Around 1856, the mudflats near the Posthuys silted up so heavily that the postvlet could no longer moor there. From then on, the handover was carried out right at the tip of the Vliehors.

The building

The original Posthuys was a wooden ferry house dating from 1777. In 1836, it was replaced by a brick building — the one that still stands today. Later, a large barn was added, where a farmer ran his business in the twentieth century; he grazed his cattle in the neighbouring Kroon's Polders.

Close by stands something else: the former lifeboat shed, moved to this spot in 1850 after the old boathouse, boat and all, was swept away by high water the year before. When a ship was in distress, four horses pulled the lifeboat to sea on a carriage. Later, a tractor took over that task. The station was closed in 1989, and the shed was restored in 2005.

The end

After 1880, the Vliepost declined in importance. A steamship service began running between Harlingen and Terschelling, and the centre of gravity shifted towards the Frisian coast.

Even so, the route continued for almost another fifty years, until 1 April 1927. The cause was personal: Jan Buijs, the last post boatman between Eierland and the Vliehors, had died the year before. After that, the post for Vlieland travelled via Harlingen.

On Texel, the Postweg towards De Cocksdorp is a reminder of the route. On Vlieland, the Postweg and the Posthuys. Two islands with a street name pointing towards one another.

What you see when you stand there

From the Posthuys, the Vliehors extends westwards. Those eight kilometres lay out there. Every morning, in the dark, with horse and cart, to collect a bag of letters from a small boat that had sailed across a sea inlet.

The island looked different in those days. The woodland you just cycled through did not exist yet.