The Scrub Pine Syndrome

Walking in the Netherlands

22 _ Once, as part of a busy ramblers' fair in the RAI in Amsterdam, I had the privi-

lege of addressing a room full of my compatriots who had just booked all-in

walking tours of what the brochures called the fairy-tale landscape of colourful

tufa cones and weird rock formations' offered by Turkish Cappadocia or the

w 'steaming lava fields and yellow-brown rhyolitic hills' of Iceland. It was my job to

tell these folks what it's like to walk across the grass from Ferwerd to Blija and

past the cows from Lammeschans to Lam bertschaag.

An impossible task, of course.

What on earth could I offer in the Netherlands to match the 'imposing rock for-

mations' of Brittany and the 'enchanting tarns' of the Tatras? The canal from Sas

to Terneuzen. And the ring canal around the Wormer and Beemster polders.

u

A scrub pine on the heath.

Photo by Jan Willem

Wertwijn.

I scanned the room and saw no one who would be prepared, like my father

shortly after the war, atop a dune beyond Overveen, to gaze down into the fath-

omless depths of a hollow and spreading his arms wide to cry in delight to his

family: 'Kids! We don't have to go abroad for this!'

So what possesses a modern human being to make him shoulder his ruck-

sack and set off on foot through the Netherlands, which as we all know is the

world's most built-up delta area? That question was put to me most cogently

during the walk round the entire country that I undertook for my book On Foot

(Voetreiziger: verslag van een tocht door Nederland, 1993), at the edge of

Grevelingen Lake on the border of Zeeland. One fine spring day I encountered

what the Dutch writer Nescio, a great evoker of nature, would have called

a gentleman of Calvinist aspect, clad in a black three-piece suit. He surveyed

my hiking boots, my rucksack, my windproof jacket and my paunch beneath it,

and asked, `Tell me honestly. Do you do this for pleasure? Or on doctor's or-

ders?'

f another soul.

So are there other grounds apart from one's health for enjoying walking in the

Netherlands? Surely there must be. I don't think that after my enthusiasts(

recommendation in the RAI many of my audience hastily swapped the

to Iceland or the Tatras for a circuit of the IJsselmeer. Still, the 11(

that in the last ten years the Dutch have started walking in their ow ► o

on a fairly massive scale. In quite a short span of time an ex ieri5ive di v Li

signposted network of footpaths has been created, criss-crossing the cnnn tr:_,

from North to South and from East to West. The Netherlands is literally

tered with red and white strips of paint on trees and red and white sticker-

lampposts, which, if you do not miss any, will get you without map or compass

from Stavoren to Lauwersoog in eight days, from Amsterdam to Arnhem in ten

days or, if you keep up a fast pace, will take you in three weeks the whole 480

kilometres of the Pieter Path from the Waddenzee in the north of Groningen

province to the border with Belgium in the extreme south of Limburg. The

names of these routes are generally redolent of sheep's wool and the distant

past: the Erratic Stone Path or the Gelre Path, the Creek Path or the Seven

Wood Path. And all of them are described in handy booklets you can put in your

pocket.

There is only one problem with them: they often treat the Netherlands as if

it actually were Nepal or Norway. They try as far as possible to avoid built-up

areas and the attendant human contact. A day out on the Dune and Polder Path

or the Mudflat and Mound Path is only considered successful if you 'haven't met

a soul' en route. But if that is the object of the exercise, then give me the

Norwegian tundra. You'll have no trouble getting away from it all there. But be-

tween Blija and Ferwerd? Or between Vaals and Epen? If what you're after is

the grandeur, the compelling splendour, the proximity of the divine in nature,

you must have a screw loose to go looking for it in the land of peat bogs and

Stone Age mounds, which anyway, as everyone knows, wasn't created by God

but reclaimed by the inhabitants themselves.

And yet the Dutch walker attaches great importance to coming home in the

evening and saying with a blissful smile that it was fantastic not to meet anyone,

The Societas Ambulationis

Academica (WandelSoc.nl),

in 2002 and 2003, during

stages of its project Across

the Netherlaiuls from Top to

Toe, carried an oaken

armchair through Drenthe

province, to place it on

every dolmen passed.

It was left behind on the

last one (D51). This photo

shows WandelSoc. and

chair at the first dolmen,

G t. Photo courtesy of

Wandelsoc.nl.

23

Dutch writer C.S. Adama

van Scheltema

(1877-1924), flanked

by two friends, in walking

outfit. Photo courtesy

Letterkundig Museum,

The Hague.

not a soul, on the way. The very Dutch urge to be atone is, obviously, a direct re-

sult of the density of built-up areas and the endless tailbacks in which the week-

end walker spends his week sighing at the wheel. 'No!' he thinks. 'There's no

way I'm going to get stuck in another queue at the weekend.' On Saturday and

Sunday mornings the buffet of many a station is full of rucksack-toting individ-

uals who have taken the train to the start of their walk and are all waiting, drink-

ing lots of coffee, till the walkers ahead of them have disappeared from view.

You can stay in the hay for the night

I myself have no problem at all about meeting people en route. Quite the re-

verse! Just consider that you can understand the people you meet. And don't

have to walk about, as you do in faraway rugged places, as if you were an extra

in a film with incomprehensible subtitles. Where else but in the Netherlands

could I have an experience like the one I had on a warm Sunday morning in that

tiny pub beyond Hummelo? It nestled among five old chestnut trees and five old

limes and was called The Van Heeckeren Arms. I stepped through the front door

and into the nineteenth century.

It must have been over a hundred years since anything had been changed in

the bar. A weathered counter served as a bar with no beer taps. A cupboard

with a mirror and a few bottles of drink. In the wall the doors of a closet bed,

from the time when the Arms was an inn as well as a pub.

'It's old sure enough,' says a red-cheeked man called Evert Jan, serving me a

coffee and an almond biscuit.

Two hundred and fifteen years. Something like that.'

For the last century, he says, the place has been run by his grandfather, then

by his father and after his father's death by his mother, who is now 84 and

whom he helps.

When she dies Evert Jan will continue the business on his own.

Will you make any changes?' I ask.

24

The Kaapse woods.

'Oh yes,' he says. 'I will. I'll have it repapered.'

A little later his mother shuffles into the bar on a Zimmer frame. She sits down

on a wooden chair, dears her throat and roars, 'Nice Sunday'.

'Mother's a bit deaf,' explains Evert Jan.

He'll leave me to her, he says, he's ready for a hot meal.

'Granny's almost 85,' says the only other customer in a rather shaky voice, as

he'd started early. The brass band is already practising!'

'You keep out of it!' shouts Granny.

I say I'm a writer.

'Write this down,' thunders Granny. 'Be-ing mo-dern serves no pur-pose at all.'

She adds that things weren't all that marvellous in the past either. 'It some-

times happened,' she said with long spaces between the words, 'that you'd take

eight piglets to market and come back with nine.'

'Granny means,' says the drunk...

'Quiet!' says Granny. 'Arable farming's going downhill at the moment too.'

'They haven't got any cows left either,' says the drunk.

'Yes we have,' cries Evert Jan from where he is eating in the kitchen. 'Three,

and a couple in the freezer.'

'Shut up!' orders Granny. 'You can stay in the hay for the night.'

'No,' says the drunk. 'That's where I'll be bedding down shortly.'

'No,' says Evert Jan, who has finished his meal. 'I'll be lying there, 'cause the

mare's ready to foal.'

'You can,' says Granny. 'But you don't have to. We're always open. Except some-

times we're not, 'cause then we're closed.'

The Netherlands that produces characters like this is a joy to walk through.

Because let's be honest: however good my Russian or Finno-Ugric may be,

I can only record a conversation like this between Vaals and Den Helder. In the

Netherlands I walk with my ears. The moment I cross the border my feet have

to take over.

25

Picture used for an

Achmea ad in Dutch

magazines (2003).

Farseeing prohibited

There are also a few snags about walking in the Netherlands. I'll mention four.

Signs. Dogs. Education. And New Nature.

First, signs.

Scattered across the whole of the Netherlands are millions of signs, telling you

in minute detail what you, the walker, can and cannot do. I'm not kidding you: at

the entrance to the dunes beyond Wijk aan Zee twelve signs jostle with each oth-

er, carrying instructions on the compulsory admission ticket, the cigarettes and

pipes that must be put out, the silence that must be observed and the dogs we

can take with us only if kept on a lead. Those on horseback must follow the yel-

low, those on foot the red and those in wheelchairs the blue arrows. I swear its

true: in Friesland every hundred metres along the sea wall there are circular

signs showing a pair of binoculars with a red line through them: far-seeing pro-

hibited!.

Outside Urk the Ministry of Transport, gritting its teeth, has opened the dike

embankment for 'recreational co-use': walking is simply allowed, cycling with

special permission, but not with a dog, open brackets close brackets.

No flies on these people!

'Shall we put no dogs" on the sign?' said one civil servant.

No,' said the other. If we do someone will come along with just one dog and we

won't have a leg to stand on.'

26

Next, dogs.

These are almost a reason for choosing the Abruzzo, Iceland or the 'imposing'

Cevennes after all. You can't walk into a single village, pass a single farm or

country house without man's best friend growling, licking, barking and rolling

its eyes, longing to get its teeth into man's fellow man.

In the centre of Roggel, in broad daylight, one of these horrors ripped the strap

of my rucksack to shreds. I heard a swish and the damage was done.

'Damn dog,' I roared. 'Bloody animal.'

'Well,' said its owner. 'You went too close to him.'

In Gaasterland a pit bull was heading towards me.

'Stay,' called its master.

Not to the dog.

To me!

The third phenomenon that deserves a warning is education. I'll simply call it

the scrub pine syndrome. In the Netherlands, it seems, there is nothing worse

than returning home after communing with nature without having learned any-

thing. It's not allowed. It will not happen. It cannot happen. The powers that be

insist that you retain what you have seen en route.

The scrub pine stands all alone on the heath in the Grote Peel. To make sure

you do not miss the scrub pine a board has been put up. At eye level a hole has

been sawn in it. You have to look through it. You then see, in line with that hole,

the scrub pine. Just to make sure there is also a brass plate saying 'Scrub

Pine

In this way thousands of nature walks assume the character of d biuLoyy

son. Pay attention! Read the sign! If not you'll get a five minus for the field trip!

This expresses a deeply Dutch quality, rooted in the national schoolmaster-

ly soul.

Take the Point Where Three Countries Meet. The Germans do nothing about

it; they don't like it when their country stops. The Belgians sell ugly postcdid.

And the Dutch are out to instruct from the word go. Numerous panels infer-

us that once long ago it was all sea here, can you imagine it? And that we

shouldn't call Southern Limburg hill country but valley country. Because noth-

ing has risen up there; on the contrary it has been worn away.

My fourth and last warning relates to New Nature. This is often invoked where

there is a meadow that cows used to graze on. That meadow then has been

turned into New Nature. I must get this off my chest: apart from the odd sand

drift the Netherlands is an artificial landscape. Constructed. Ordered. Made.

There's nothing wrong with that - it is a feature. And it has often been beauti-

fully done.

In the meantime all over the Netherlands nature conservationists are busy

roughening the man-made landscape. They themselves will say: returning it to

Mother Nature. I don't believe it. They're too sure they know what Mother

Nature likes and what She doesn't.

What they would most like to do, I believe, is to restore nature to a supposed

primeval state, to the day when the Lord God created the Netherlands - which

as has been said He never did. In the Ooy polder near Nijmegen I was accom-

panied for a day by an extremely amiable environmental officer from the State

Forestry Service who told me that he was trying, with all the means at his dis-

Dutch writer Belcampo

(1902-1990) ready to

hit the road. His shorts

can still be admired at the

Letterkundig Museum in

The Hague. Photo courtesy

Letterkundig Museum.

The Hague.

27

posal, to get rid of the willow. Because the willow displaced the reed beds along

the waterways. And in the reed beds lived the reed warbler and the blue heron

which the Forestry Service would like to see re-established in the Ooy polder.

And because the willow provides a home for the sparrowhawk and the buzzard,

which the Forestry Service happened to be dying to get rid of!

A few days later I was travelling on a boat through the Biesbosch with his col-

league from Brabant. He told me that he was trying with all the means at his

disposal to bring the willow back. Because beavers lived under willows. It was

true that the last indigenous beaver had been killed in 1826. But he had just

caught thirty-six German-speaking beavers along the Elbe and driven them to

Brabant in a van. Unfortunately few of the females had survived the move. This

was apparent from the signals sent by the transmitters implanted in the

beavers and which closely monitored, for instance, their mating behaviour. The

transmitter had also made it possible to track down a specimen that had found

its way into a shopping centre in Dordrecht.

Come with me

The Drenthe Aa.

The New Nature makers and the Long Distance Footpaths have one thing in

common: they try to suggest that the Netherlands is actually rather like

Lapland, a wild country full of unspoiled nature.

Things are much simpler than that.

Come with me, be my guest, let's walk together, and you can see for yourself.

Walking in the Netherlands is the joy of a soft, springy dune path between Wijk

aan Zee and Egmond in a chill spring morning mist. Solitary trees twisted out of

shape by the sea wind loom up from the shreds of mist like skaters on

a frozen lake. Or a little further on the polder beyond Alkmaar. In the green fields

the sheep graze, rear ends to the wind. Or else the dike between Stavoren and

Hindeloopen. On dams cormorants shake out their wings. Coots bob up and down

on a wavelet. An elderly couple shell boiled eggs in a rowing boat and fish for eel.

28

The Beerrister polder.

He's got a bite.

He waves.

A morning like an etching.

A bit further on, beyond Makkum, it is as Frisian as it gets: water, grass and

fringes of reeds. On the horizon the saddleback roofs of five, six, seven village

churches.

The mud flats between Schier and Pieterburen were made by God, an hour

ago at high tide. That timeless space makes you long to lose yourself in it for

ever.

And oh, the Drenthe Aa! How amiably the stream meanders as if it were

a real river! Further up some lonely birches. A distant edge of a wood that the

sun shines through. Or else the Waal, especially when clouds and river seem to

merge in a curtain of rain. In Zeeland waters the deeply Christian bargee's wife,

with whom we were allowed to sail, points to the sky that is red and grey and

white all at once and in which the clouds seem to hold the promise of distant

lofty mountains.

In the dip of Zuid Beveland, after a day without a sound full of winding dikes

and hedges of blooming hawthorn, I walk into the Westerschelde hotel, my face

flushed with happiness.

The owner asks if I am suffering from stress.

I say, 'No.'

'If ever you are,' she says, 'throw the pills away and come here. It's so quiet: in

less than an hour you'll be in a coma!'

To cut a long story short: this country may not be primeval, but a walk through

the Netherlands is a succession of small, unspoken delights. A chicken bridge

across a ring canal, a ferryman's house in the water meadows, a cow under an

apple tree, a cloud on the horizon: everything the Dutch painters saw, long be-

fore you and I were born. •

29