People don't really live there, these are holiday/recreational homes. My family owns two of those islands with a holiday home.

Typically you use them for the weekend. My mom for example lives in a busy city and has a small garden, she uses the holiday home as a weekend getaway and a place to keep the sailing boat.

The Netherlands are small and this area is very central, about 20 minutes drive from Amsterdam or Utrecht. So most owners use it in the same way.

Curious, how does it smell? Living in an old dredged peat bog sounds like smell could be a challenge.

With standing water yes, but this is not standing water.

I saw some photos with ladders from the water. Does people go swimming there, is the water clean?

You're not allowed to live there officially, but some people do.

Yes but those mostly live landside, there are holiday homes at the edge of the lake as well. There was a plan to allow permanent use, but I think it now changed to only allowing it for people that already live there and no new cases.

Let me guess, no sewage disposal.

There is a reason for it. Infrastructure, access roads, public transit stops, build quality, utilities. The Netherlands has very high standards for homes and the direct surroundings and these homes do not meet those criteria. You would also have significantly more emissions if people started living there which would go against the emission limits for nearby nature.

I read these properties are actually some of the most expensive properties in The Netherlands ($ million dollar).

But no electricity (need generator) and you cannot drive your car to your lakehouse.

Plus, I bet the mosquitos are horrible, it is a former swamp.

There is electricity now, but it's quite new. Before that ours used to run on solar + batteries, you don't want a noisy generator in the middle of a nature area. A holiday home doesn't need that much electricity, warm water and heating use gas.

Prices are typical for this side of the country.

Easily over a million for the ones without neighbors. The most expensive one was listed for 13 million.

These are holiday homes for wealthy elites in Amsterdam. You either go there straight from Amsterdam by helicopter or you have a chauffeur drive/boat you there. These people don’t drive themselves.

But probably not for long with non-primary real estate being taxed at 2.2% a year.

You may find this area on google maps at https://www.google.com/maps/@52.1792241,5.0288801,516m

Is this area the inspiration for the Gyptians in The Golden Compass?

Obnoxious cookie banner with no "reject all" button. Too bad, it sounded interesting.

With UblockOrigin blocking all Javascript by default there was no cookie banner, just the article and photographs.

And on iOS? Which is maybe what they're using

Isn’t that actually illegal under GDPR? There’s a reason all the other sites allow you to opt out and it’s not because they want to do that.

Core77 doesn't do any business in the EU, so it probably isn't a concern. There's a few states in the US with cookie banner requirements, so it was probably designed around that.

Violating gdpr is apparently legal. But even having opt out instead of opt in is in violation

Looks lovely. I wonder if it has good fishing.

I wonder how they're doing right now with water levels reaching critical low points.

Water levels in this area are tightly managed by pumps. Also in normal times they pump water in and out to keep a specific level. All of this is lower than the Amsterdamrijnkanaal, so without pumps it would flood, water doesn't naturally flow out of this place only from evaporation.

Next, google "bog butter" to see one of their more interesting uses.

It is also a fantastic carbon sink.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/21/headway/peat-...

"Although peatlands make up just 3 percent of land on Earth, they store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined."

Nice it was historically just dug up and the leftovers turned into expensive holiday homes.

If you add enough heat, pressure and (geological) time it becomes coal!

Anybody whose done any amount of gardening or has houseplants is probably familiar with peat. Though its harvest is destructive to the unique peat bog environments it forms

There's a huge push to go peat-free, and I agree 95%.

There are just a few uses for peat that don't have an alternative. I mention this to fellow gardeners because if you go 100% peat-free, you'll end up with an expensive disaster and, out of frustration, may go back to peat entirely.

I think it's not productive to ignore the small corner cases where peat is almost a requirement.

It is also used to give whisky a smokey taste.

It usually holds many times its solid weight in water. If you add load to it by building something on it (without designing around the ground conditions) it can compress to a fraction of its volume, resulting in ground settlements that can be very large.

Can also be used to build a home. Up to 1940 that is how the lowest class in The Netherlands lived. Plaggenhutten, homes made out of peat, straw, manure.

pre-industrial peoples in some parts of the world used this material extensively.. some still do