De Kalmthoutse Heide

 

Middelburg is a nice city, but it lacks one thing that I enjoy: a good swath of forest! That's thanks to the inundation of October 1944, where the dikes were bombed by the RAF to flush out the Nazis. The whole region was flooded by the tides twice per day for nearly a year- the 80th anniversary of this, and of the liberation of Middelburg, is coming up next month. 

Lovely forests with old oak and pine trees in the Grenspark. They were all planted about 120 years ago to provide lumber for future generations, though I think they've ditched that plan now. 

That in mind, I wanted a nice day trip this weekend. So I selected "Grenspark Kalmthoutse Heide", near Bergen op Zoom, on the Belgian border. That's about 45 miles due east of Middelburg, an hour and a half by train and bus. I was out the door at 7:55 on Saturday morning (may as well continue the weekday routine!) with high hopes for this vast area. 

I love public transport

Vast for European standards, that is. I saw one sign that said nearly 6,000 hectares in size. That's 14,000 acres for you imperial-system fans out there, or about 23 square miles. So there's a lot to see there. Heide, "heathland" in English, is a landscape of low shrubs, poor soils, and (in the case) a lot of wetlands. This landscape once covered a lot of Europe, but it was mostly converted to cropland after the invention of chemical fertilizers allowed the nutrient-poor soils to be farmed. The heather-plants have beautiful purple flowers from July to September, and I just caught the end of the bloom. 

Heide in bloom- this must be incredible at its peak!

One of several very complicated maps. There were separate ones for horseback, hiking, biking, regional walking routes, and general visitors. That's the one you see above, an amalgam of the others. 

I got off the bus in Hoogerheide, and found a cozy cafe to get coffee and an appelflap, an apple turnover. Then I started walking, by the end of the day I'd cover about 12 miles. And that's going in as straight a line as I could manage, to give some sense of scale to this place. the weather alternated between warm sun and cold, heavy rain showers- a classic autumn day. (really every day, regardless of season) 

One of many wetlands

I walked for most of the morning without seeing many people: perhaps a dozen in three hours! The landscape was uncannily like Minnesota, but maybe that's just my jaded view of many Dutch landscapes. The ground here is very sandy, and it's actually where Middelburg gets all of its drinking water: the aquifer here is pumped, treated, and piped 45 miles to the west. All the groundwater around my residence is salty, so this is the system they've worked out! 

Wetland selfie!

By the afternoon I'd come to the interesting parts, the inland-dunes and the observation and fire tower. (with all the conifers and dry shrubs I can see how they're worried!) And I can say now from experience that walking over sand is about twice as grueling as I'd thought, after a couple hours. Combine with the weather, and perhaps that's why there were so few fellow hikers. But the sights made it well worthwhile: 

The fire tower is 24 meters/79 feet tall (40 meters for the fire-lookouts!)

View to the South

View to the North

Open and windy landscapes, a lot like a prairie if you squint!

I arrived to Kalmthout, the next town across the border, at 4:00, and hopped on a Belgian train back to The Netherlands. My opinion is that these are superior to the Dutch trains; affordable, better coverage, faster; more style. (though the Dutchies like to make fun of anything in Belgium- "cheap Netherlands", they call it) This was one of those exhausting but very fulfilling days; and that night I slept better than I had in a long time.