Freedom-joy along the Frisian Middelzee!
The French have the Mediterranean, the Frisians have their Middelzee. Or rather: hads. Because the Middelzee is now filled in. And around that former inland sea are wonderful winding roads on dikes.
In the Eisinga house, the centuries-old gears are still ticking in the attic. It's tight and low there. If you want to go up and down the steep steps, you have to watch carefully where you put your motorcycle boots on the narrow steps. And then you bump your head against the low beams. Stars in front of the eyes, planets on the ceiling. In the beautifully painted living room, the planets revolve imperturbably above the box bed, as they did centuries ago.
After Leiden, the town of Franeker had the oldest university in the Netherlands. The Franeker Academy flourished from 1585 to 1811, when the Frenchman Napoleon closed the science institute. One of the students was Eise Eisinga. The man we know from the oldest working planetarium in the world.
Together with his father and his brother, Eise built this miracle in his house between 1774 and 1781, to reassure his contemporaries. They thought that the earth would perish because a number of planets came to be in the wrong constellation. Eise wanted to prove with his planetarium that things wouldn't go that fast.

A few kilometers after Franeker, the route bends over the Van Harinxma Canal. A beautiful motor road awaits you there. Die Slachtedijk is a masterpiece of road engineering. Though he wasn't meant to be. Gradually from the thirteenth century, various loose dikes were merged into the structure you will be driving over. Where you zoom through the bends with a view of vast meadows at a pleasant height, the water of the Middelzee once sloshed.
In Bolsward, the Frisians have a town hall that can easily be sold as a palace in France. After they had built from reed and wood for centuries, the Frisians more than made up for the damage by leaving beautiful stone buildings to us. The Roman travel journalist Pliny scorned the Frisians on their mounds, 'shipwrecked at high tide, sailors at low tide'. But now those southern Europeans around their Mediterranean threaten all kinds of disasters, caused not by planets but by our own human tinkering with the climate.
Then you are a lot more pleasant around the Frisian Middelzee. For the time being without extreme drought, heat or other climate malhour. And Friesland, which stands for freedom and happiness. For the time being you can also just drive around here on the dike roads, let's be careful with that. The concrete slabs are woven in a beautiful curve pattern.

East of Sneek you make a swing to the Sneekermeer. Pleasure boats bob in the harbor of De Potten, working ships and old-fashioned sailing ships stomp in column through the channel on the lake. You loosely follow the course of the Zwette (Swette, the Frisians write), traditionally the separation between the islands of Oostergo and Westergo, regions on both sides of the Middelzee. This border ditch was dug around 1300 on the axis of the former Middelzee.
Where there was water, there was land. And then came dyke roads, which protrude above the land. The route meanders over a variety of narrow embankment roads. 'Kedung! Kedoeng!' the tires do rhythmically on the concrete slabs with which the road is covered, Hey, there's the Slachtedijk again, with its party garlands.
A 'go' is an island. You used to have a Westergo and an Oostergo in Friesland, and the Middelzee was, no surprise, right in between. Westergo was bordered by the Wadden Sea and the current IJsselmeer, Oostergo ran to the Lauwerszee. The southern borders of both islands consisted of impenetrable peat bogs, which were slowly but surely being reclaimed.
The salt marshes grew in the Westergo basin, and a broad estuary formed on the border with Oostergo, which was called Bordine in the eighth century and later Middelzee, when it had already been reclaimed. The Frisian capital Leeuwarden once lay on that water. But the port city became a country city in the late Middle Ages, when the narrow funnel, which formed the Middle Sea here, was diked between Westergo and Oostergo, silted up and was filled in.
Frisian churches sometimes have a special feature. If a village did not have enough money for a real church tower, the bell was hung in a wooden construction, separate from the church. A bell tower. The clock served to tell the time for people working in the fields. The bell was also rung at danger, funerals and weddings. From the pre-Christian era, the function of the clock was also adopted to drive away the army of evil spirits, with which the fields, forests and waters were thought to be populated.
'Look', one motorcyclist says to the other at the little church in Hartwerd. 'There's a Frisian bell chair there.' 'No,' says a lady, walking her dog. "It's a belfry!" Learned something again.
The highest windmill in Friesland is located in Burdaard on a cul-de-sac along the water. A hefty 36 meters high is the De Zwaluw corn, peeling and wood sawing mills. Mighty beautiful mechanism, almost everything made of wood, converts wind energy into work. Wooden planks, bread flour: you ask, we grind.
A volunteer guide precedes us. Do you pay attention to your feet and your head? You can climb the steep stairs to the fourth attic, where you have a beautiful view on the platform over the ships in the Dokkumer Ee and the surrounding lands.
Burdaard has another attraction, not far from the mill. Dairyman Ruurd Wiersma rode his motorcycle to his girl, but the church lords, farmers and the director of the dairy did not like that. We also know Ruurd because he painted the entire interior of his house, including the stove and the ceiling, with Biblical scenes in fresh, naive colours. So he was not such a heathen, that Ruurd. But it does fit nicely into the image of Frisian freedom and happiness.
Dokkum, known as the easternmost point of the Frisian Elfstedentocht, is a village with urban allures. You drive through a beautiful town within ramparts and of course there are ships moored there. Every self-respecting Frisian town has a harbor.

In front of the dikes, mounds provided protection against the water of the Middelzee. These hills were raised by human hand. When the land was embanked, many mounds were excavated because of the fertile mound. But if there was a church on it, the mound was spared. As in Hegebeintum. After the highest mill, you now get the highest mound in Friesland. Most mounds were between two and seven meters high, but the hump of Hegebeintum stands proudly nine meters above NAP.
In the visitor center you can score a cup of coffee and a guide-volunteer, who will show you around the terp and through the church. The oldest part of the house of worship is made of tuff, which was brought here from the Eifel in the twelfth century. Monks in Friesland later learned to make bricks, there is enough clay here, so the later parts of the church were made of it, including the tower. It also contains a bell to ring and a clock that has to be wound by hand every day. Another fine example of Frisian mechanics, not from Franeker this time, but from Leeuwarden.
Dikes were systematically built on Oostergo from the eleventh century onwards. The course of the oldest dike is the current road from Holwerd via Ferwert to Stiens. There are some nice curves in there. But after Oudebildtzijl it is over. A straight dyke road lies in front of our wheels.
What you just looked at from Hegebeintum, you now drive. Parallel to the current seawall. The former Middelzee was gradually reclaimed from the Middle Ages. Het Bildt was created in 1505 with the construction of the Oudebildtdijk. It is called the longest inhabited street in Europe. He sure is long. And right. The garlands of the Slachtedijk are hard to find here.

The Bildt was the last part of the former Middelzee to be reclaimed. It is designed with the ruler, which can be clearly seen on the map and while driving. Behind the houses is newly diked land, fertile even without a mound, behind it the sea dike that is supposed to keep out the seawater. After Nieuwebildtzijl you can even drive on the dike, please take it easy, because of the sheep on the road.
At the Zwarte Haan you will come across the statue of the Slikwerker, a tribute to the workmen who won the land over the sea with the shovel. After Westhoek, the B-road continues narrowly over the old dike body. Then the swing of the Slachtedijk starts again on the left. Who enters the Frisian interior again, where the whole game of freedom and happiness can start again. A perpetuum mobile that Eise Eisinga could only dream of.
Slachte is an old word for inner dike. The Slachtedijk formed the western border of the Middelzee. The one and a half meter high dike meanders about 42 kilometers from the Frisian Wadden coast through the Frisian landscape.
The first dikes were built more than a thousand years ago and have been riveted together over centuries. De Slachte is not accessible to motorcycles over its entire length, so here and there you have to resort to alternatives. They also run through the green Greidhoek, the juicy meadows where the famous Frisian pedigree cattle provide black and white accents.
Between the blue sky and the green grass there are beautiful villages here and there, such as the chic Mantgum, Wiuwert (known for the mummies in the church) or Jorwert (known for the book 'How God disappeared from Jorwert' by Geert Mak).