A large group of children was eagerly waiting for the gate of Waarland Swimming Pool this afternoon, exactly at 12:00 noon. Armed with a towel, swimming trunks, bikini, bathing suit and a good dose of good humor, they prepared for the first splash of the season. And it promises to be a special season because the bath is 75 years old.
“It’s definitely a party. We have nice weather and it’s great that we can now open again, after two difficult corona years,” says chairman Kees Stoop of Swimming Pool Waarland. “The bath opened in 1947 after it had been completely excavated by hand. The Netherlands was in the process of reconstruction, but because this was a wetland area, the Waarlanders decided that a bath had to be built.”
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So in the first instance it was about safety, swimming lessons for the children. The sheeting was made with old sewer pipes that had been used by the Germans as tank traps in the dunes near Schoorl. In the 1950s, volunteers with help from the village again went to Schoorl. Then to get nice soft sand for the bottom of the bath and to build a beach.
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“The great thing was that in the summer of 1947 there also happened to be a heat wave, they had eight days above thirty degrees. So the volunteers had timed it well,” says chairman Stoop, who also obtained his swimming diploma there. . “I have grown up here in that regard. First I was allowed to go to the ball line. But after obtaining the papers I was allowed to enter the fourth bath and I also belonged to the real men,” he says with a laugh.
The opening today was made even more cheerful by the music of the local fanfare ‘Samen VoorVoor’. The children were unstoppable and were already in the pool 30 seconds after they had come through the gate. “My father got his diplomas here and I got A, B and C”, says one of them. “It’s a really nice village pool.”
Pride
There will be plenty to celebrate this anniversary year in the swimming pool that has lost none of its importance in all those 75 years. “It is the pride of the village. Such a small village and such a beautiful swimming pool,” explains chairman Stoop. “And the number of visitors is still good. People like to come here. It is the best hidden secret of Waarland. It is just enjoying here in the summer”.
Not only the swimming pool was opened again today. Also the adjacent Molenhuijs took off. There is an exhibition about the polder and the importance of the mills as standard. At the moment there is also a small exhibition about the history of the swimming pool.