In one of the magazines I’m subscribed to, there was this walk in the largest beech forest in the Netherland, between the hamlet of Drie and Garderen – in the midst of the Veluwe. The biggest of them being a beacon for sailors for ages, the largest, straightest trees have been cut for their wood and the curly ones survived. In earlier days, when traveling through these forests, these seemed to dance in the little light spread by torch and lantern, and the shadows that were the result of movements. That’s what caused the folklore names: “The Forest of the Dancing Trees”.
Within the forest there are quarters with different trees: oak, fir, pine and lork, each with their own character, which gives the walk some relieve form monotony.
Along the road images have been carved in the trunks of cut-off trees, of animals that are the silent but busy workers in the forest – any forest – to digest fallen leaves and other material to become nutrient for the trees.
Another walk from the same starting location headed North, again mainly by woodland, to the heather fields, usually used by military for training driver skills in rough terrain, but clear from vehicals during the weekends.
This time I took my little camera – and here is the result of both walks.
I translated the walk into waypoints to be loaded into my Garmin GPS, as well tracked our walks. The waypoints can be downloaded in Garmin,GPX and CSV format. If you prefer to follwo our steps, download the tracks in Garmin, general GPS or CSV format