Nijmegen - Beek - Groesbeek 17 km.
For days (if not weeks) I have been excited about the next section of the walk. If I were doing this walk sequentially east to west it would be the first time in some 200km that I would encounter anything that vaguely resembles a contour line. Even so I can't but get excited looking at the map and longingly trace my fingers over the curving russet lines on the map that indicate the existence of hills and valleys. These are the very same hills we saw on our way back from a trip to Germany two or three weeks ago and in the mist from the northern banks of the river last winter.
Finally a window of good weather appears amidst all the rainy days and we drive to Nijmegen for what is essentially a hybrid walk: one that joins the last few kilometres of the Lingepad to the first few kilometres of the Pieterpad south of Duivelsberg. The logic lie in the public transport links: Groesbeek – the destination - has good bus links back to Nijmegen. There are few train lines /stations along this section of the Pieterpad and organising day trips here will involve some ingenuity.
Heading east away from Nijmegen one immediately goes up a bank onto a glacial moraine overlooking the Meertje, a small river that separates the floodplains of theWaal from the higher ground. This is where the great and good of the city live – large Victorian-era mansions, with extensive gardens and equally extensive views. Our route takes us from these pleasant suburbs to areas with a more distinctive village feel– but which still rank highly on the des-res scale. These are hand designed houses, with follies and turrets and in one case a sweeping staircase running through a bank of rhododendrons. Soon we leave the houses behind and are trailing through a patchwork of deciduous woodland interspersed with small meadows. Being Sunday the path is busy, mostly with dog walkers and joggers and sometimes people combing the two.
Beek is the only village on the route. Formerly a washing community that took in Nijmegen’s laundry, it has rebuilt the public wash houses where the women folk used to earn their money. From Beek we go up and down a bewildering maze of paths and logs staircases, passing an old border post that once defined the German Dutch border. Shortly after we arrive at Duivelsberg, (Devil’s Mountain), used as a hill fort during the 11th century.
It is an impressive hill but the Dutch habit of referring to any elevated piece of land as a mountain still grates. I refer to them as bergjes, using the very common Dutch practice of suffixing a ‘je’ to the end of a word to make it diminutive (classically as in a biertje – which is what you get – a small beer). There is hardly a noun in Dutch that is not subject to this process – but my play on words however is rarely appreciated, possibly the Dutch are sensitive about the size of their proturberances and don’t like to see them diminished in status.
We enjoy a cold drink at the extremely busy pancake house and continue to wend our way through a mosaic of woodland and pasture towards Groesbeek. Only when we get back on the bus does it briefly start to rain
No comments:
Post a Comment