Walking from Amsterdam to Dutch Countryside

Amsterdam's edge doesn't fade into countryside — it stops. On the northern side of the ring road, the last apartment blocks and a gym sit almost against the A10 motorway, and then, at the S117 crossing near IJdoornlaan, the city hands off very suddenly to open Waterland polder. This walk starts at exactly that seam, at the point where commuter traffic gives way to a quiet cycling road.

Once past the motorway, the route narrows onto Scheepsbouwersweg, heading toward the municipality of Landsmeer — three villages, Landsmeer, Den Ilp and Purmerland, that will together mark their 700th anniversary on 23 June 2026. For most of that history Landsmeer was a farming community strung along the water, part of the old Waterlandse Unie that once tried to compete commercially with Amsterdam and Monnickendam. Today it is known instead as a commuter village, home to people who work in the city but wanted a house on a dike rather than a canal-side apartment.

From Scheepsbouwersweg the walk drops into the fields themselves — flat polder land cut by drainage ditches, with a cycling path running beside it that many Landsmeer residents use to reach Amsterdam faster than a car ever could on the ring road. Low farmhouses and the occasional windmill break up the horizon, and the wetlands of the Ilperveld nature reserve, one of the region's known birdwatching spots, lie within easy reach of this stretch.

The walk ends among the canals that hold the polder together — the same water management that has kept this land dry and farmable since Landsmeer was first settled, and the reason every field here sits just above the waterline of the ditch running past it.

This is what TravelHubCam is here to show you: not a curated countryside postcard, but the actual seam between a European capital and the land that used to feed it — the motorway crossing, the cycling path, and the canals in between.