The national ‘tile whipping’ contest is helping the Netherlands to reach its environmental targets
Tineke Menalda sits in the sun on her front step, nursing a cup of coffee and idly plucking out the odd weed. Three years ago, the front of her terrace house in Amersfoort was completely paved. But now, sitting in a lush garden of trees and green, she is an official ambassador for the strangest new sport in the Netherlands: tegelwippen, “tile whipping”, or “whipping away” the paving stones.
“A lot of people think that tiles are easier, but actually when you have larger trees, you get very few weeds underneath them and you can make it really easy,” she says. “When I had paving I would never sit here, but now it’s a garden, it’s cooler in summer and in the spring, it’s lovely.”
