Every design for Schoorl

Behind the centre of Schoorl the land rises into the highest and widest dunes in the Netherlands, and the village has stretched itself out along their foot rather than climb them: long and thin, squeezed between the North Holland polders and the Schoorlse Duinen. Its old name, Scoronlo, is thought to describe a wood on high sandy ground beside marshy shoreland.

Most people remember Schoorl by the Klimduin, the bare sand dune that spills straight into the village. Generations of Dutch school trips have scrambled up it, and every Whit Monday the Meidenmarkt, an old courting festival, is held right there. The painter Jan van Scorel was born here, and there is a statue of him in the village. The dunes also hold harder memories: Kamp Schoorl, an army camp turned internment camp during the Second World War, is marked with a simple memorial.

For those who grew up here, the map shows the routes of childhood: cycling through the pines to the beach at Schoorl aan Zee, sand in every shoe, summers full of campers. Some places never really leave you.