Bolsward - Makkum | Klooster Claercamppad pilgrimage trail: Stage 9

The ninth stage of the Klooster Claercamppad pilgrimage trail is somewhat shorter than the others. It leads out of the Hanseatic city of Bolsward in a westerly direction and takes you to the shore of Lake IJsselmeer.

The area west of Bolsward was once an impassable marshland. But from the Middle Ages onwards this peat landscape was inhabited and cultivated and the new low-lying polders were surrounded by a system of dikes known as the Hemdijken dikes.

The monasteries were closely involved in the construction of the Schraarderhem and Exmorrahem polders west of Bolsward. The trail leads you across the drained peatland to Exmorra and Allingawier, two picturesque little villages where you can see a traditional grocery shop, a farm museum, a blacksmith’s forge and old village churches.

Here in Makkumermeerpolder the land is up to 2.5 metres below the Amsterdam Ordnance Datum in places. In the distance you will see the village of Makkum and its large shipyard come into view. In the Golden Age, the people of Makkum ran a thriving quicklime industry and were busy making tiles and bricks. Today the village is a popular tourist haven with a sandy beach and a shipyard that builds luxury yachts.

The route takes you past the weigh house and the beautiful warehouses next to the lock on the Grutte Sylroede canal that made Makkum the ‘Gateway to the Zuiderzee’. From 1450 onwards, the lock was maintained by the monks of Bloemkamp monastery near Bolsward. So here too, the local monastery played an important role.

This route is part of the Klooster Claercamppad pilgrimage trail.