The Secret Garden

I've walked past the entrance to Sorghvliet Park several times on the way up to Scheveningen. Scheveningseweg, like your traditional Dutch road, is a multi-decker sandwich of pedestrian paths as bread, a bike path, highway, duo tramlines in the middle, bike path, and another pedestrian path, which separates Sorghvliet Park (in the Zorgvliet district of the city, just to add confusion) from the Scheveningse Bosjes.

Well, I say I've walked past the entrance, but what I really mean is that I've seen the entrance from the other side of the road, but never took my life in my hands to cross the Highway Sandwich From Hell and actually go inside until today. I was inside for all of twenty seconds - the amount of time it took me to read that Sorghvliet park was a walled enclosure, open only during certain hours of each day, and solely accessible if you had a yearly pass, one of which you could buy at the tourist information in the centre of town. But not there at the park itself. Of course.

Well, determined to get my walking hours in, I set off to the public library that houses the tourist information, bought a pass for the year at seven euros, and walked back.  

The park itself isn't huge, and although it was once part of massive landscaped estates (including formal gardens said to have rivalled Versailles) owned by the statesman Jacob Cats, then by King William II, (and now houses the official residence of the prime minister in its own private part of the estate) it is now more wild woods than anything truly park-like. But I love the atmosphere and the light there, and considering you're bang-slap next to the nearly 350-year old original highway between the city and Scheveningen, you lose sense of where you are once the noise of the traffic has quickly faded away.

Legend has it the show of snowdrops later this month, and bluebells in May are not to be missed, but I have to say I fell in love with the starkness of the trees reaching up, en déshabillé, to touch the piercing blue of the sky. It's a lovely, quiet, almost secret wood, and I think I've already had my money's worth just from my first visit this afternoon!