There are parts of the Netherlands that can still surprise even native residents of the country. While the west coast is heavily populated, busy and very urbanised, the eastern border regions are refreshingly rural, with lush rolling… well, ok, there aren’t any “hills” as such, but plenty of green grass and picturesque barns!

The land in this part of the Netherlands is older, the trees more mature, the waterways more naturally meandering – unlike much of Amsterdam, this side of the country has always been at least a couple of metres above sea level! The towns and cities of this region are some of the oldest in the Netherlands, and the land is fertile and flat and open.

Despite heavy bombing in the war, the regional centres of Arnhem, Apeldoorn and Nijmegen, and smaller towns like Deventer and Zutphen have retained much of their medieval market centres and ancient city walls, redolent with a quiet elegance that belies their more modern descent into ignominy. Spanning major waterways, such as the Rhine and the IJssel, these were once grand trading centres with illustrious histories stretching back beyond Roman settlement.

With the chill of autumn in the air, it was a pleasure to travel through the verdant fields, greeting black-faced sheep and short, fat little ponies enjoying the last of the lush summer grass, and catching glimpses of grand manor houses through the trees.

To cap off an enchanting weekend: the Hoge Veluwe National Park, a wild, mysterious woodland space, a legacy of the lifelong dreams of Anton Kröller and his German wife, Helene Kröller-Müller. Travelling in true Dutch style, quietly and peacefully, occasionally catching a glimpse of red deer or wild boar, revelling in the sounds and smells of nature in its element.

photographs and words by zoë yule.

I had something completely different planned for my next post for you, but the weather here in Amsterdam today has been truly diabolical, and I have retreated back to the warmth and colour of Morocco again in protest. I hope you will forgive my selfishness, and I promise I’ll share more Amsterdam adventures very soon.

So, let me take you on a journey through another glorious city of Morocco, with a very different atmosphere to the relaxed vibe of Essaouira. Fes is one of Morocco’s four Imperial cities, and served as the country’s capital at various times depending on the whim of the king at the time. The 9th century medina of Fes al-Bali, the ancient walled city within the sprawling metropolis, is a truly bewildering maze of alleys and doors – getting lost within its walls is a right of passage for visitors to the city.

The city snakes along the valley of the River Fes; ancient fortress walls and turrets crown the surrounding hillsides, affording a great view of the medina below. The Blue Gate heralds the entrance to the old town, with the enormous minaret of the Kairaouine mosque visible through the arch. The attached University of Al-Kairaouine, founded in 859 AD, is the oldest continually operating university in the world, cementing Fes’ reputation as a city of great scientific and religious learning through the ages.

The medina of Fes el-Bali is overwhelming – a gigantic maze of tiny, intricate alley-ways and tunnel-like streets, with people, shops, animals and houses all piled on top of each other in much the same way they have been for centuries. Transport options are similarly traditional – donkeys are equipped with special shoes made from recycled tyres, which allow them to traverse the sometimes steep cobbled streets, especially when their panniers are packed higher than their heads! As a pedestrian, besides the donkeys, which give way to nobody, the kamikaze motorcycle riders make walking the narrow streets an adventure not for the faint-hearted.

The souks buzz with colour and noise. Fes is renowned for its leather production, and the tanneries nestled deep within the leather souk have been operating in the same way by generations of the same families for hundreds of years. The view from the showrooms is one of the most picturesque (and subsequently photographed) views in the country.

Other souks are the traditional home of weavers, coppersmiths, fresh food purveyors or sweetmeat and nougat producers. The busy streets are punctuated with the great arched entrances to mosques and madrasas: oases of calm tiled with mesmerising geometric mosaics and intricate carved-wood facades.

Beautifully restored caravanserai offer a welcome respite from the hustle and bustle; with spaces on the ground floor to accommodate both camels and their cargo, and accommodation above for their human masters, these trading houses provided temporary retail space for merchants to dispose of their exotic wares.

Outside the city limits, smoke rises from the pottery kilns the city is so famous for, producing intricate cobalt-glazed ceramics and zellij (mosaic tiles). One of the most impressive views of the city can be found from the roof terrace of the Crown Palace Hotel; perched high on the surrounding hillsides it provides the perfect vantage point, cocktail in hand, from which to take in the smoke-reddened sunset over the city. The evening call to prayers, swelling from the 40 or so mosques in the old city, echoes across the valley and delivers a truly magnificent soundtrack to a magical day in an intriguing city.

all text and photographs by zoë yule

Autumn has arrived in Amsterdam, just this week. The leaves are turning and starting to fall, and there is a chill in the mornings that wasn’t there last week. There is a new series on the BBC I’m watching, called The Frankincense Trail, following Kate Humble along the ancient trading route of the sweet incense from Oman through the Middle East to the Holy Lands. The sights and sounds of her journey reminded me so much of my own first introduction to the Arabic world.

I arrived in Amsterdam in the middle of a wintry January. While I was semi-prepared, it was still a shock to substitute the sticky, tropical heat of high Summer in Queensland with the dark, damp cold of an Amsterdam Winter. It’s a different prospect transplanting yourself into winter – you don’t have a gradual autumn to get used to it! And as a Queenslander I had little experience of the European winter. Before I left, I had made contingency plans to alleviate the winter-itis I was sure would set in after the novelty wore off – I booked a 2 week holiday in Morocco.

This was greeted with immense surprise by my friends and family in Australia. For Europeans, Morocco is a recognised holiday destination, but for Australians it is virtually unheard of. I was seeking warmth, and was drawn to the exotic image and saturated colour of Morocco. When I was a child I lived with my family for 2 years in India, and while I love the serene, cool whites and pastels of the European aesthetic, every now and then I crave the intense blues, mustard yellows and vivid purples of warmer climates. I found them in spades in Morocco.

In 2 weeks we managed to cover quite a cross-section of this beautiful, wild and untouched country. While I am not usually a tour-group traveller, this time I was immensely grateful for the knowledge and access granted by the presence of our local guide and small group. Nevertheless, after 10 days of the dusty, rocky, endless interior deserts, the first glimpse of the bay of Essaouira appearing on the horizon caused a frisson of excitement in the group.

This beautiful, ancient, World Heritage listed port, with it’s Portuguese ramparts and whitewashed mud-brick Medina is a charming, blissfully relaxed town which feels like it’s permanently on holidays. I’m told that in summer its quiet riads and blue-doored villas overflow with an influx of tourists from Europe, and it is a particular favourite with the French. If you’re a Shakespeare fan, you might recognise the alleyways – they starred in Orson Welles’ 1952 film Othello.

Sitting in the sunny central square in the middle of February, with the balmy sea breeze wafting by, and enjoying fantastic Italian gelati at the price of 20 euro cents per scoop, it was hard to imagine it teeming with French tourists. Most of the older, beautiful town houses in the Medina are also owned by foreigners, pushing the prices well beyond the average local. I can see why they are drawn to own a piece of this haven – how could you resist retreating from the heat of the beach to the cool behind those beautiful doors and shutters?!

After fresh fish and seafood grilled straight from the ocean, and more of that gelati (I think I made it through nearly every flavour – believe me, we ate there several times a day!), we took evening strolls through the colourful market streets, open late and twinkling in the twilight. Despite its reputation as a hippie destination, there is more to the trading centre than the touristy tee-shirts and flip-flops. The port still functions as a small, but bustling fish market, and the town is renowned as a cultural centre for painters, wood carvers and musicians. The souks are as relaxed and easy-going as the rest of the town – the hard-sell of the busier cities is easily avoided here.

Mogodor Island and the Iles Purpuraires, just beyond the ramparts, sealed the port’s ancient prosperity through the availability of the murex shell: the tiny, rare mollusc responsible for the royal purple dye that coloured the robes of the Roman Emperors. The port was an important trading post along the ancient caravan routes from sub-Saharan Africa for thousands of years.

You might have noticed another recurring feature of my photographs: Morocco, like many Islamic countries, is a region where the street dogs of other poorer nations are nowhere to be seen. Our guide told me that Muhammad apparently decreed that only shepherds should keep dogs; and where there are no dogs there will always be cats. In a fishing port, of course, they have found their niche (and plenty of cosy places to curl up!).

all text and photographs by zoë yule

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

“In or out of ‘em, it doesn’t matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that’s the charm of it.”

“Whether you get away, or whether you don’t;”

“whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you’re always busy, and you never do anything in particular;”

“and when you’ve done it there’s always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you’d much better not.” —The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame.

Oh, Ratty really did know what he was talking about. On a warm, summer weekend this beautiful city truly comes alive, and Amsterdammers take to the water in almost anything that floats.

To join a group of friends, both old and new, in an elegant, spotless bateau “painted blue outside, and white within”; to share in Prosecco, and tiny tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, and crisp, cheesy Italian pizza; to meander along the canals and river, the strains of Billy Holiday drifting across the water: to do all these things amongst the glints and gleams and gurgles of the water, is to spend a day cut straight from the pages of that wonderful childhood story.

And then, to escape the narrow canals of the city and take to the broad sweep of the river, where the steep brick walls of the canal houses give way to fields, and cows, and larger, old-fashioned farm houses – yes, I quite understand Mole’s enchantment.

For this entrancing experience we  had Pia and French Boy’s friends to thank. They invited us all on their recently renovated beautiful ex-lifeboat for the day. We were, in all, a cosmopolitan lot – Romanian, Danish, French, Australian, and Indonesian – and by the end of a long, warm day full of fun and sunshine, I think we all agreed that there really was “absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

all words and photographs by Zoë Yule

I couldn’t have put it better than Hemmingway.

It’s certainly difficult to see much of Switzerland without travelling as much vertically as you do horizontally! Growing up in Queensland, I’m not particularly well acquainted with mountainous terrain, and my last visit to the Alps was many, many years ago. So I was completely enchanted with the excursion planned by some seriously alpine-minded friends of mine. Luckily, they didn’t expect me to climb anything more than a few stairs!

As our journey progressed from train, to rack-and-pinion rail, to cable car, the scenery changed too. From rolling green hills and jewel-like aquamarine lakes to narrow valleys and jagged, vertical cliff-faces, eventually the snow-capped peaks rose in front of us, and behind, row after row, disappearing as far as the eye could see.

Words deserted me at the top. The true impact of the magnificent views from the top of the Schilthorn (the quieter, less touristy cousin to the famous Jungfraujoch), nestled in the centre of the Alps, with the majesty of the Jungfrau, Mönch and Eiger spread before you in all their glory, must be experienced to be believed.

With mind reeling from the dizzying heights and thin air, my delightful tour guide had yet another hidden jem to share, nestled in the valley below the mountains. On the hillside above the Brienzer See (another of those eye-wateringly blue lakes) is an open air museum, the Ballenberg, which showcases the history of rural living and traditional customs, including more than 100 authentic buildings from all the different regions of Switzerland.

The architectural styles differ quite dramatically from canton to canton, and most of the buildings are furnished or in working condition. While the buildings have been brought in from other regions of the country, they are all old (some date back many hundreds of years), and are carefully dismantled and reassembled in much their original state. Nestled into the hillside they create an idyllic village atmosphere.

Rare indigenous breeds of goat, sheep, cattle and horses are also kept, and small plantations of traditional crops, vegetables, herbs and nut trees, including medicinal plants, are grown. Many of the buildings host demonstrations of traditional crafts, including wood carving, lace-making, pottery and weaving, agricultural techniques and cheese-making.

And in such a small country, who would have thought that the architectural styles could differ so widely?! From Germanic half-timbered dairies to the large Tuscan-style farmsteads based around a central courtyard, each canton is identified by its unique architectural style, perfectly designed for both function and environment. The tiny, basic alpine huts sheltered the cowherds and functioned as cheeseries while the cows spent the summer high in the alpine pastures, while wood-shingled grain stores were raised on posts and stone disks to keep out the mice.

This fabulous, beautifully executed museum is a wonderful day out – a true slice of Switzerland in a manageable space. There are spaces for picnics, activities for the children, great cafes and several giftshops selling the craft items and produce from the museum. While we did a lot of walking, and the park stretches to over 66 hectares, it is not strenuous (though there are horse-driven carriage rides for the weary) and there were plenty of rest stops (a.k.a. photo opportunities for me!). The entire day was a magical glimpse into the life and history of a country that has seduced me in no uncertain terms. Yes, the scenery is stunning, but the people are also lovely – polite, and friendly, and very welcoming. I can see more of Switzerland in my future – and maybe in yours as well!

all photographs and words by zoë yule.