Noordwijk Dunes and Beach

Update November 2022:
The dog off-leash area has been drastically reduced, it is now only the southernmost part of the park, all other areas are leash-only areas. It’s still a nice spot to walk and there is a beach to play around on, but unfortunately the new limitation does rather reduce it’s attraction for dog walkers.

Noordwijk is about a 45 minute drive from Haarlem and such a huge walking area that you need to make a day of it to appreciate the vastness of the place, or at least plan to spend half of your day for this trip.

There are 3 officially marked routes that you can follow but with very little research effort you can find a ton of alternative routes, for example, Komoot has almost 20, or you can simply wing it and follow whatever takes your fancy on the day.

There is a lovely mixture of dunes, forest walks and beach in the area. In summer the beach is, as expected, fairly busy and there is only one section where you can walk with your dog off-leash, but I usually only use that spot to cool the dog down on a warm day. Having said that, Zandvoort is usually busier than this section of the Noordwijk beach.

Unfortunately apart from the beach itself, there are no watering holes for drinking or cooling down, so do remember to pack plenty of drinking water for both you and your pup on a hot day. Restaurants on the beach provide refilling opportunities.

There are cycle paths and horse trails throughout the area, but there are so many paths elsewhere that one or two shared paths or detours are not going to spoil your off-leash day.

Despite being a really popular place, you do not find yourself walking with hordes of people the whole day. You will come across people all the time, but it is not overwhelmingly busy. There is a short route that people with families often follow at the north end of the dunes (the yellow route) and the further you go from here and the main parking spots, the less busy it will be.

There are several parking spots along the Randweg and the Duinweg, but even so, I would advise you to arrive before lunchtime if you want to be sure of easy parking. We usually park at the Parkeerplaats Duindamseslag.