In leisure terms, the premise of all the West Friesland Islands is a simple one: hire yourself a bike, ride along a cycle path, look at the birds, go home.

Schiermonnikoog, however, is the kind of place you might want to visit after suffering the trauma of electric shock therapy. It’s so smacked out and stultifying unassuming that even after smoking a few bongs of zummerweit you’d struggle to find cause for panic.

Unfortunately though, and despite its relative isolation and almost complete absence of cars, the swarms of domestic tourists here have somewhat tempered the natural savageness of the place. But fortuitously, this being the Netherlands, theirs is a curiously innocuous approach to leisure.

A unique fusion of innate frugality and pervasive Calvinism has manifested itself in a novel bid for backwater tourism, where recreational activities have been almost exclusively spartaned down to solitary kite flying, bird watching, and cycling through the sand dunes. Amusingly, because practically all the tourists are Dutch, Schiermonnikoog has come to resemble something of a national sanctuary from an increasingly bewildering modern world.

But what better form of escapism than sailing through the lightly shrubbed, undulating dunescapes which comprise the majority of the Island? It’s as stupefying dull as it’s heavenly serene; an odd coupling further enhanced by the peculiar tendency of sound to be absorbed into the vacuous dunes or instantly carried away by the incessant winds.

Understandably, for inhabitants of a sand bank in the North Sea, continuous struggle with a hostile natural environment is a recurrent theme. For the Frisians, it’s the time honoured price paid for an autonomous freedom which predates the Roman era.

Here, in perhaps one of the earliest accounts of life in the Wadden region, the Roman, Pliny the Elder, describes a visit to the area:

Given this thrifty ancestry, it’s no surprise there’s not a bucket and spade shop in sight. Evidently, meagreness and self flagellation are resoundingly persistent habits, and nowhere is this more apparent than with the medley of leisure activities on offer.

These slightly anachronous structures are mobile booths, presumably designed for wheeling out to remote spots for solitary sitting and silent contemplation. The lease is low – but a few Euros each day.

Such is the furore and excitement surrounding "Uncle Sieger's" tractor tour (or Eilander Balgexpres) that it appears throughout the Island’s associated literature, and sometimes more than once in the same booklet.

Prior to the introduction of tractor tours and multicoloured booths, Frisians leapt across ditches with the aid of long sticks (Fierljeppen).  In amongst his somewhat perplexing observations, E.V Lucas notes:

On a similarly unrelated note, this sign on the Schiermonnikoog village chip shop presents an interesting translation conundrum. The expected translation of "Herring - your best friend" is slightly unsatisfactory because 'maatje' refers to both a friend and an individual herring only.

But that aside, any account of Frisian fun would be incomplete without a mention of long distance mud walking (Wadlopen).  Once a simple practicality, this imaginative blend of frugality, humility, and physical hardship is now a popular tourist activity with international appeal.