IJmuiden 1

On 17 June 2017 the Harbour Festival was held in the coastal town of IJmuiden. I went there to visit the former HMS Naaldwijk, a minesweeper from 1955. It was of course named after our town of Naaldwijk and the municipal council of Westland decided in 2016, on my proposal, to sponsor the ship for 5000 euro. So I wanted to see how the ship was doing. Of course I stopped at the local Primera for a datestamp. The stamps I used were the North Sea pier at IJmuiden, destroyed in 1869, from the series 'The Netherlands and the water' and the provincial flag of North Holland from 2002.

IJmuiden is a port city in the Dutch province of North Holland and is the main town in the municipality of Velsen. It is located at the mouth of the North Sea Canal to Amsterdam, and lies approximately 17 kilometres north of Haarlem. The internal capitalization in the city's spelling is because IJ is a digraph in Dutch, and is therefore sometimes considered to be a ligature, rendering it a single letter. The port of IJmuiden is a deepwater port suited to fully laden Panamax ships, and fourth port of the Netherlands.

In the Roman era, this Velsen district was already inhabited, and archaeological finds at the impoldered lake of Wijkermeer indicate there was a North Sea port of some regional importance built here. Present day IJmuiden includes four harbors: the vissershaven (Ship's code IJM), a fishing dock (visafslag), the haringhaven, the IJmondhaven and the Seaport Marina IJmuiden, a harbour for pleasure craft. IJmuiden became the largest fishing port of the Netherlands after the island of Urk became closed in by the Afsluitdijk. The town suffered heavy damage and demolition during World War II, because of its maritime importance.

City/town:         IJmuiden

Municipality:     Velsen

Area:                63,05 km² (Velsen)

Population:       67.585 (Velsen, April 2017)

Website:           velsen.nl

Post office

Primera Prince

Planetenweg 62

1973 BH  IJMUIDEN

facebook.com/Primera-IJmuiden-Prince

Date sent: 17 June 2017

Date postmark: 17 June 2017

Date received: 20 June 2017

Number of days: 3

Envelope in collection: 181

Post office photo not yet available. :-(