Leg number 2 – another 23 kilometers (more or less) on a bright, sunny day. We started where we stopped last time: at the Drienerlo raiulway station, next to the FC Twente football stadium. The route has been diverted but signalling was poor – but keeping the same direction – towards the bridge crossing the Twentekanaal – we got back on track.
Passing old footpaths along meadows in the Twekkelo area – where people thrive to keep these old lanes open – to Boekelo. This village is where salt mining started in the 1920’s. You still see the little green barns everywhere, where steam in injected in the slat domes deep underground, and salt water is returned. The Boekelo Tourist Office houses in a black drikking tower.
From there we entered one of the largest estates in the area: Twickels. Every farm that belongs to the estate has black-and-white blinds aside the windows. The estate is famous for it’s nature reservation work. In the midst of the estate is the village of Beckum. From there, we followed one of the paths used by people to go to church – through low-lying woords – and in bad weather conditions, it must have been a hard walk of several kilometers – in muddy conditions.But the weather has been fair the previous week and today – so no mud-walk for us.
Again, the walk has been tracked (in Garmin, general and CSV formats) and a number of pictures have been taken
Month: April 2010
Havezatenpad 1: Oldenzaal-Drienerlo
We started with a 23 kilometer walk from Oldenzaal to Drienerlo. The walk starts at the Oldenzaal Railway sation, passed through the rural area South of Oldenzaal and North of Enschede, traversed over the Technical University campus, to our destination: the Drienerlo railway station (just outside the football station of FC Twente), where we took the train back to Oldenzaal.
Not too bright weather, but nice to walk. Of course I took pictures – and tracked the walk in Garmin, Generic and CSV formats.
Havezatepad – The prologue
The Havezatenpad is a long distance path from Oldenzaal to Steenwijk, and it contains a kind of prologue – a two-day walk from Vollenhove to Zwartsluis and back.
In former days, Vollenhove used to be a bishop seat, and the capital of the Dutch Northern Territories, ruled by the bishop of Utrecht. This is still shown in the mansions that still exist in town.
When the daministraion moved to Zwolle, the major business of the town was fishing, which ended in first half of the 20th century, when the former Zuiderzee was dammed and new polders were created.
Zwartsluis used to be the statsion where turf was moved from the Eastern part of Overijssel and Drente to this towen, and moved over to larger vessels to bring the fuel to Amsterdam.
Today, watersports and tourism is the major source of income – for all towns and villages in the area;
Vollenhove lies on a bank of sandy material, high grounds aside an area that was long inaccesable except by boat; Turf was harvested and that causes shallow lakes to form; this area now is a nature reserve, attracting lots of visitors.
The walk is tracked (available in Garmin, general and CSV formats – and images have been taken to show the environment. We had two showers, one leaving Zwartsluis, and one just before re-entering Vollenhove. No pictures have been taken during these showers.