Exploring Natuurpark Lelystad – Where The Wild Things Are

I’ve mentioned our frequent trips to our local nature park numerous times on this blog, but it occurred to me that I’d never actually written a proper guide with everything one might need to know if they wanted to visit. Today’s post is about rectifying that oversight with a guide to Natuurpark Lelystad, a lovely nature park with lots of free-ranging animals, fun things for kids to see and do, as well as plenty of opportunities to relax in nature. Let’s get to it!

About Natuurpark Lelystad

Natuurpark Lelystad is located on the outskirts of Lelystad, right where you come off the highway into Lelystad proper. It was established in the early 1970s in collaboration with Artis Zoo (in Amsterdam) to protect large ungulates (animals with hooves). Today it is still a place of protection for wildlife and it also plays a large role in helping to reintroduce wild species of animals such as Przewalski’s horses in Mongolia and European bison in Russia and Latvia. The areas where the animals live are very large, so it’s not guaranteed that you will even see them on a visit, but usually you will see quite a few!

What To See and Do at Natuurpark Lelystad

We often visit Natuurpark Lelystad when we want to go for a walk but feel like going somewhere other than just our neighbourhood. It’s a short drive from our house and there’s plenty of parking, although you could also ride your bike there and then ride around within the park to explore. It usually costs €3 to park, although there have been times when we’ve visited on the weekend and the parking is free, so you might get lucky! There is lots to see and do within the wildlife park, including:

Visitor Centre

The visitor centre is quite interesting, with lots of taxidermied models of the different animals you might encounter in the park and informational displays. It’s all in Dutch though, so you might need to use Google Translate if you want to know what it says. There’s also some good interactive parts for children. The visitor center is open Monday to Friday from midday until 5pm and Saturday/Sunday from 10am to 5pm (closing at 4pm between November 1st and April 1st).

Restaurant

In the visitor centre building, there’s also a restaurant where you can have lunch or a snack, with a lovely deck overlooking the pond which would be a delightful spot to sit in summer. There are also plenty of spots within the nature park where you could enjoy a picnic, which we have done in the past, but if you wanted to break up your visit with a meal at the restaurant (and use the toilets in the visitor’s centre) then there’s everything you need. The restaurant is open Monday to Friday from 10am until 5pm and Saturday/Sunday from 10am to 6pm.

Playground

I also really love the main playground that’s just near the entrance adjacent to the visitor’s centre and restaurant. There’s a pretend stork nest and a little statue of a beaver (I think) as well as a flying fox, which I have even had a go on one time when there were no children around! But usually there are plenty of children having a great time on all the different play equipment.

Art

Sometimes there are art installations within the park, along with some permanent sculptures including a bison near the entrance and the wooden bison that’s in the photo in the About section. The photo above I took during a temporary exhibition which had random artworks throughout the park, so you never know what you might see.

Archaeological Open Air Museum Swifterkamp

Along with all the nature, this park is also home to an archaeological open-air museum that has its own separate website. It’s not always open at the same time as the rest of the park but visitors can actually stay overnight here to see what it would have been like to live here during the New Stone Age. On the website, you can see when there are special events held where there will be people at the village demonstrating different activities like textile shaping, felting, wool dyeing and weaving.

Walking and Cycling

There are walking/biking paths throughout the park, so you could easily spend a few hours walking or riding around to see everything. We’ve only ever walked as it’s a little bit too far to ride our bikes all the way from home, but you can also hire bicycles from the visitor centre if you want to cycle through the park and don’t have your own with you!

Otters

My absolute favourite part of the park, and the reason I usually drag Dennis along for a visit, is to see the resident European otters! The main otter enclosure has a fantastic viewing setup where you can either look down from a balcony over the water and grounds to see the otters, or you can go downstairs into a covered area where there are windows through which you can sometimes see the otters up close around feeding time.

If you visit outside of feeding time then you don’t always see them, although we have occasionally seen one sunning themselves on the grass. They’re fed every day at 3pm and you can often spot them waiting around as the time gets closer. Pro tip: if you manage to visit on the day that daylight savings ends, they get all confused at their feed being (to them) an hour late, so you will get to see them a lot! We even saw this adorable exchange with an otter and a golden retriever meeting through the fence, and you can see in the photos at the bottom how impatient this otter was getting at his late dinner time!

Moose

Another animal we’ve seen a few times are some European moose (or elk), including a young moose (a bit older than a baby but not an adult) the first time which you can see in the photo above! Apparently, there were wild moose in the Netherlands around 1,000 years ago, but nowadays you can only see them here in Lelystad Nature Park. We haven’t been lucky enough to see a male moose with antlers yet, so hopefully one day we will.

Wild Boar

We’ve seen wild boar a few times on our visits to the park, including one time in spring when there were lots of adorable babies! Wild boar were extinct in the Netherlands in the 19th century but were reintroduced, so it is possible to see them in the wild, although it’s probably safer to see them from behind a fence here. We were behind a fence to take the above photo, but we were still very close and the boar were completely unbothered by humans being near them. Another time we saw a male boar having a good scratch on a tree, which I even got a video of:

Przewalski’s Horse

Przewalski’s Horse is a wild horse breed that was never domesticated by humans, that unfortunately became extinct in the wild. However, due to breeding programs in zoos and nature parks (like the one in Lelystad!) these horses were reintroduced to their native Mongolia. Today there are still Przewalski’s Horses living wild at the nature park, although we only managed to see some once so far, and they even came up to the fence to have a look at us as you can see.

Birds

The nature park is also a great spot for bird nerds, with a number of purpose-built nests for the storks to use dotted throughout the park. Of course, you’ll probably also see ducks, geese, swans and cormorants. It’s also possible, apparently, to spot kingfishers, ospreys or even eagles, but you’d probably need to be very patient and/or lucky! I just enjoy seeing the storks up close and sometimes cute goslings or ducklings in spring.

Other Wildlife

As well as all the animals I’ve mentioned, there are also herds of red deer and Père David’s deer, which we have seen from a distance but didn’t manage to get any decent photos of. There are apparently also bison in the park, which have also been bred here to help with reintroducing them into the wild around Europe. We haven’t actually ever seen these in the flesh, although we’ve seen the statues/sculptures around the park! There also used to be beavers here, which tunnelled out of their enclosure and now live wild, but are pretty elusive so we’ve never seen a real one. There is a stuffed one in the visitor centre though. Basically, if you want to see a wide range of creatures, spending a day exploring Nature Park Lelystad is a wonderful way to do so!

How to Get to Natuurpark Lelystad

Natuurpark Lelystad is located just outside Lelystad, which is about a 40-45 minute drive from Amsterdam, depending on traffic. It’s a bit difficult to get to via public transport, although you could get the train to Lelystad and then catch a bus to the Lelystad, Natuurpark bus stop. From there you still need to walk a bit down a long-ish road to get to the park entrance. If you have a bike you could bring your bike on the train outside of peak hours and then ride to the park from Lelystad train station, but really, the easiest way to get here is by car. As I mentioned, you usually have to pay €3 for parking, but you can stay as long as you like between sunrise and sunset. You can find out more on the official website.

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Have you visited Natuurpark Lelystad or another wildlife park in the Netherlands? Tell me about it in the comments or pin one of these if you think you might like to visit this one for yourself some day!