We walked the The Low Lands Section in just over a year: from 27 April 2013 to 4 May 2014.
The section can be split in a couple of smaller pieces:
- Hook of Holland - Nieuw Vossemeer
Long straight dikes, lots of water en lots of wind. Meadows until the horizon and now and then a sailing boat. That's about what is there to be seen. We most liked the Oostvoorne Dunes. On the other hand we were less enthusiastic about the passing over the Philipsdam: too much tarmac and too much traffic.
- Nieuw Vossemeer - Diest
Large open meadows change place for small pieces of corn and bits of forest with here and there a village. Very nice walking, according to us. The best piece without a doubt is the passage over the Kalmthout Moors though the forests around Bergen op Zoom make a good runner up. Ah, and the piece between Wuustwezel and Brecht of course. Really nasty pieces we didn't encounter. Maybe the part along the Schoten canal, just after Brecht. It's a narrow cyclepath where racing bikes try to pass you as close as they can.
- Diest - Kanne
Around Diest the first hills can be found and though it's getting flatter again after that the landscape had changed. More forest, more sandy grounds and less cows in muddy clay until the marl land arraves. The best part must be between Zutendaal and Lanaken with lots of forest, some hills and oh so quite. But the final kms from Maastricht to Kanne with hills and wineries should not be forgotten.
We estimate that the Low Lands Section is about 50% tarmac roads. Not ideal, but honestly speaking only a small percentage of these tarmac roads is indeed main road; usually they're narrow local roads with little traffic.
We walked the whole section as day hikes, hence without luggage. Up to Kalmthout we could even go home to sleep from Saturday to Sunday but later that would have simply taken too much time driving up and down and so we stayed overnight in either a camping site (Brecht, Westerlo) or a hotel (Diest, Bolderberg) depending on the time of the year and the weather. As much as possible we tried to park the car at the end point of the day and took public transport to the starting point. Occasionally when this was too unpractical (bad transfer, for instance) we parked the car at some central location and used public transport to get to the starting point and from the end point back to the car. We hope we can keep doing this for a while, at least until into France. From there we will have to see how public transport connections are.
|
|
|
