The approach to Vosseslag Beach takes you through dunes that rise five meters high in places, their slopes covered in beach grass that shivers and bends in the constant wind off the North Sea. Wooden boardwalks wind through the protected landscape, built to keep foot traffic from eroding the fragile ecosystem where rare orchids bloom in spring and songbirds nest in the scrub vegetation. You'll emerge from the dunes onto a beach that feels genuinely remote despite being just kilometers from De Haan's belle époque center, the sand pale and clean, marked only by driftwood and the delicate tracks of shorebirds.
“You're swimming at one of the last undeveloped beaches on Belgium's coast, where protected dunes outnumber buildings.”
White cliffs over a desert beach
The beach curves gently here, with none of the commercial development that defines most of Belgium's sixty-seven kilometers of coastline. You won't find beach clubs or snack bars, just sand and sea and the dunes rising behind like natural ramparts against the modern world. The tide moves across flat expanses of beach, leaving behind pools that reflect the sky and temporary lagoons where children can wade safely while their parents claim territory on the upper beach with nothing more elaborate than a towel and an umbrella anchored deep in the sand.
By late afternoon, shadows from the dunes stretch long across the beach, creating bands of cool shade that offer relief from the summer sun. The wind picks up as the day wears on, carrying sand in visible streams across the beach's surface and filling the air with the dry rustle of beach grass from the dunes above. You'll hear the waves more clearly here without the competing noise of promenades and traffic, their rhythm constant and hypnotic, while overhead the sky performs its North Sea theater of racing clouds and sudden shafts of sunlight breaking through.
