On sunny summer weekends, the expansive waterfront deck of De Durgerdam is usually heaving. Its wooden dock brims with boats — their owners come ashore to enjoy the hotel’s hospitality — and the lake teems with swimmers who jump joyfully into the IJmeer from the end of the jetty. Sadly, the weekend we visit, high winds and driving rain mean the deck is closed and the dock deserted.
Holing up cosily in the hotel is all well and good — hotels being the ultimate port in a storm, after all — but I’ve been banging on about how I’d be wild swimming this weekend. And so, possibly emboldened by lunchtime wine, an afternoon dip seems a brilliant idea.
My friend Richard is less convinced, but gallantly agrees to accompany me off the jetty. The (fresh) water is surprisingly warm and swimming in the storm is invigorating and gloriously elemental — even if it is quite hard to see much. As we pad proudly back up to the hotel in our fluffy robes, we receive a round of applause.
De Durgerdam is a five-mile cycle ride northeast of Amsterdam, but feels a world away. Named after the waterfront village in which it is located, there has been an inn on the site since 1664. Then, the IJmeer lake was part of the Zuiderzee, a saltwater inlet of the North Sea, and Durgerdam was a port village and haven for visiting sailors. In 1932, after recurring flooding in the region, the IJmeer was dammed and today it is a freshwater lake.
This spring, after an extensive five-year reconstruction, the old inn reopened as an elegant, 14-room boutique hotel whose aesthetics celebrate the Dutch Golden Age of its origins, the century or so during which the Netherlands’ trade, science and art — as well as its colonial empire — was the envy of the world. And while it retains the informality of an inn, this is high-spec innkeeping. De Mark, the hotel’s all-day restaurant, is a collaboration with Richard van Oostenbrugge and Thomas Groot, the chefs behind two of Amsterdam’s most highly rated restaurants, the two-Michelin-star 212 and one-Michelin-star De Juwelier. The lakeside terrace serves the full restaurant menu too.
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We arrive late on a Friday night, beset by flight delays. But not only have De Durgerdam thoughtfully taken our order in advance, on arrival we are ushered from the taxi straight to our table in the twinkly restaurant, relieved of our luggage and handed a drink. There’s no formal check-in or even a desk, all of which contributes to the sense of arriving at a home rather than a traditional hotel. The subterranean reading room, with its velvet couches, fire and library, even features an open-all-hours (dangerous) honesty bar.
De Mark’s menu is focused on locally sourced, sustainable ingredients and our starters (from £12) — leek with puffed grains and a hay gravy (the leek is cooked four ways: roasted, pureed, charred and tempura battered) and Dutch herring with kohlrabi, horseradish and apple — are both outstanding. Likewise our mains (from £23): glazed Dover sole stuffed with chanterelle mushrooms and served with bearnaise sauce and local shrimps, and roasted beef bavette with a salad of summer beans. Happily, it’s just a short stumble up the (slightly treacherous) 300-year-old central staircase up to my bed.
I wake with the sense of being inside a Vermeer painting; our suite, featuring a central wood-fired burner, is all soft greens, mustards and dusky pinks, velvets, silks, linens and furs. The antique desk in front of the window overlooking the lake almost makes me want to do some writing.
I said almost. Instead, we head downstairs for breakfast at one of the pavement tables in front of the hotel. Coffee, pear juice (local and so more sustainable than orange), croissants and rhubarb jam are included, with a more extensive breakfast menu available.
There’s a fierce, albeit warm, wind blowing off the lake, and ominous storm clouds are gathering as I head out to explore the village of Durgerdam. About 200 quaint, gable-fronted, perfectly maintained houses, all of which are heritage listed, stretch along the waterfront.
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The plan had been to cycle into the city — the hotel has a fleet of bikes, both traditional and electric, for rental (£17 and £34 a day respectively) — to visit the Van Gogh museum. But the storm blows in and we content ourselves with sampling the rest of the hotel menu instead.
There are no weak links. The starter of roasted beetroot with mustard ice cream is a revelation, as is the deep, richly flavoured tomato tartare, while the roasted cod with crème of burnt peas and vin jaune sauce is outstanding. The spring chicken roasted with mustard, tarragon and artichokes is an elegant spin on cosy comfort food.
Any guilt over missing out on the museum is assuaged by the carefully curated art collection on the walls at De Durgerdam. There’s a vast still life by the Dutch master Pieter Jansz van Berendrecht, and works by contemporary Dutch artists such as Jacqueline de Jong and Philip Akkerman. Hanging from the ceiling is a light installation fashioned from fishing nets and crystals by the artist Ingo Maurer. I never much cared for sunflowers anyway.
By early evening, miraculously, the sun has broken through as we hop in a taxi to the east of Amsterdam, to board a pretty, green-painted wooden boat for what’s billed as an “adventurous mini vacation”. (Albeit an adventure for which you need to book two months in advance.)
The tiny fortified island of Vuurtoreneiland (translated as “lighthouse island”) was part of a defence line built around Amsterdam before it became home to lighthouse keepers until the 1950s.
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A decade ago the Dutch forestry and nature commission asked for ideas for how the uninhabited island should be used, and a team of entrepreneurs pitched their plan for a unique dining experience, using local produce and helping to keep its historic monuments alive.
Now it is the site of a highly rated restaurant accessible only by this boat; no other craft have landing rights on the island — and, as of this year, six rustic cabins in which guests can stay overnight.
The hour-long cruise wends us along the river IJ and through the Oranjesluizen series of locks, past industrial warehouses that are now hip bars and restaurants, and past Durgerdam itself, into the Markermeer lake.
As we dock, staff line up to greet us. It does feel like the beginning of an adventure . . . and also a little like a scene from The Menu, the dark satire starring Ralph Fiennes about an exclusive restaurant on a remote island.
● Best hotels in Amsterdam
● Best small cities to visit in the Netherlands
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The restaurant, open from May to September, is a vast, spectacular greenhouse with water views on all sides. The five-course tasting menu (£95, including the boat ride, plus £41 for optional wine pairing), includes barbecued grey mullet with samphire and sorrel, saddle of lamb with lamb sausage and roasted peppers, beetroot sorbet and brioche with eggnog, and is all the more extraordinary for being cooked and served on an island with no mains power or running water (vuurtoreneiland.nl).
On Sunday morning, I blow the cobwebs away — literally, as the high winds are back — on a bike ride into central Amsterdam, a 35-minute ride on dedicated cycle paths.
At the grand Rijksmuseum, where we have just missed the sell-out Vermeer exhibition, we visit the permanent collection, and I discover that I don’t really think much of Rembrandt (sorry), or his habit of painting himself into every work, like some 17th-century version of a serious selfie habit.
Having battled the elements and even finally sampled some culture, we reward ourselves with a Michelin-starred hangover lunch at De Juwelier, Van Oostenbrugge and Groot’s French-style bistro (starters from £11, mains from £24; restaurant-dejuwelier.nl).
It’s while sampling the local post-prandial, juniper-flavoured spirit, genever — made only in the Netherlands — that we are minded to take an after-lunch amble through the red-light district. There are women in the windows and doorways, and signs warning rubberneckers not to take photos of said girls. None of it feels erotic; it feels like a human zoo, staged as a spectacle for tourists like us. It’s interesting, but only in an anthropological sense; Margaret Mead, we agree, would have loved a minibreak to Amsterdam.
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While nobody could accuse civilised, picturesque Amsterdam of being hectic — even its iconic canals are mostly populated by quiet electric boats, part of an initiative to make the city’s waterways emission-free by 2030 — nonetheless, I am grateful to return to the soothing lakeside serenity of De Durgerdam. Maybe I am getting old, but it’s a damn sight sexier too.
Jane Mulkerrins was a guest of De Durgerdam. B&B doubles from £262 (dedurgerdam.com). Take the Eurostar or fly to Amsterdam
More hotels with wild swimming
1. The Thief, Oslo, Norway
Frequented by celebrities including Rihanna and Justin Bieber, this art-filled hotel in downtown Oslo sits on Tjuvholmen, Thief Islet, a waterway once notorious for smugglers and pirates. Along with the low-lit indoor pool, guests can swim in front of the hotel via a bathing ladder. Kayaks and stand-up paddleboards are available — drift a few minutes along to the promenade of Akker Brygge, teeming with bars and restaurants. For those seeking more open water, ferries and cruises in the Oslofjord depart a few minutes’ walk from the hotel.
Details B&B doubles from £262 (thethief.com)
2. Hotel les Trois Rois, Basel, Switzerland
Decades before wild swimming became the favoured weekend hobby of perimenopausal British women, the Swiss were making rivers in their big cities safe and accessible. In the centre of medieval Basel, swimmers enter the Rhine at the pebbled beach of Einstieg Rhyschwimme, two bridges down from the Hotel les Trois Rois, where legend has it Napoleon held the hotel’s first business lunch in 1798. Locals swim with their clothing, and even laptops, in colourful waterproof Wickelfisch bags, which are sold all over the city. Currents are strong and the river is fast-flowing — this is not for beginners.
Details Room-only doubles from £520 a night (lestroisrois.com)
3. Nhow Berlin, Germany
On the bank of the River Spree, spitting distance from the East Side Gallery, the colourful Nhow is impossible to miss with its pop art aesthetic and upper floors that lean towards the water — water that, sadly, is too polluted to swim in. On the opposite bank, however, the Badeschiff is an outdoor pool constructed from the hull of a cargo ship that floats in the river, enabling wild-ish but sanitary swimming in the heart of the city, with views of the TV Tower, the Molecule Man sculpture and Oberbaum Bridge (£7 for 2 hours; badeschiff.de). Being Berlin, there is a bar and, often, DJs in the evening.
Details Room-only doubles from £143 (nhow-hotels.com)
4. Hotel Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Sweden
Despite being one of the busiest capital cities for ferry traffic, Stockholm’s harbour is clean enough for a dip. Popular city beaches include Smedsuddsbadet on the island of Kungsholmen, Langholmsbadet in Langholmen, and Tantolunden on the island of Sodermalm. Hotel Skeppsholmen, a former naval barracks renovated to Scandi chic, is on one of the city’s smallest islands. The busy waters around the hotel make swimming slightly treacherous; a short walk (cycle, or kayak) away is Ostermalm, where the Nobelparken has peaceful coves and beaches.
Details B&B doubles from £194 (hotelskeppsholmen.se)
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