Hiking in ‘Het Geuldal’ (The Netherlands)

The sun is shining but with only 4°C it’s cold when I leave my car at a parkinglot on the edge of the village Epen in the very south of the Netherlands, the hills of South Limburg. Going around the corner this days’ hike starts with a hollow road which ends in front of a vakwerkhuis. A few minutes later I’m walkin through fields with a stunning view in front of me. Two other hikers make their way across the fields in the distance and I linger a bit to let them disappear. I like to walk alone.

After a short walk on a roadside. Cross a bridge, turn left and find myself on a narrow and muddy path that leads me through fields northwards along the river Geul.

The Geul is the best known river in South Limburg. It has its source in Germany, is 56km long and flows also through a part of Belgium. Due to the large difference in altitude, 242 meter at beginning and end, it is the quickest flowing river in the Netherlands.

It’s only been a few months since this now calmy flowing river flooded large parts of the region I’m walking in due to heavy rainfall, destroying everything on its path. Today nothing reminds of those horrible days and I am treated on spectacular views on a gorgeous sunny day.

After an hour I arrive at Mechelen and decide to treat myself on coffee and a piece of ‘kersenvlaai’, cherry pie in Limburg, on a sunny terrace. Temperature is slowly rising!

Leaving Mechelen the path leads me through a series of meadows and fields again. I hear churchbells in the distance and come across a family of curious cows who I quietly pass.

The Elzetter Forest appears in the distance and I am reminded to keep my focus on my navigation when I miss the narrow path on the right at a crossroad and take the wide road on the left. I have to turn back.

The walk through the forest is wonderful. The tall trees on this hillside forest are starting to change color, the leaf covered path up and down is sometimes challenging and the silence is overwhelming. This is what I came here for.

After leaving the forest a steep, narrow and hollowed out path leads me back down to the fields along the Geul, this time further south and southwards close to the Belgium border. The fields are muddy and I sink almost ankle deep into it, but I manage to keep my feet dry.

Where a small bridge crosses the river the path leads back northwards in the direction of Epen. In my case this included a little detour due to me being distracted.

Finally on the right track again I come across the Volmolen, a watermill, built in the 17th century and rebuild in 1880 after being destroyed by fire.

A walk across fields and meadows leads me back to Epen where the hollow path that was the beginning of this beautiful hike brings me back to my car.

Step back and breathe

Before January is coming to an end I’ll take some time to look back on 2020. That year was probably the darkest year of my life, and NOT because of Covid. As I wrote in a previous blog our family was confronted with severe mental health issues of our son in 2020 and we are still (trying to) deal with it. Trying, because after all these months I still struggle with it enormously.

I also wrote that I felt we were slowly climbing out to the light. Well I was wrong, we hadn’t hit rockbottom at all! It got worse and made us feel pretty desperate.

I’m grateful for all the help he gets from care givers these past months, but as a parent we feel a bit left out in the proces. I’ve always tried to lend an ear to whatever problem my children had and this situation was no exception. But to listen to the same story, worries and troubles over and over again is a whole new thing. How to handle suspicion and anger, doubts about therapy and his own mental abilities? What to say when the other one doesn’t want to live anymore? And how to behave when there is someone in your house who hardly speaks and shows nothing but anger?

The whole situation took its toll on me and I knew I needed to do something about it to prevent me falling apart. And although it wasn’t easy I decided to literally leave everyone behind and go to France in September for a corona-proof hiking vacation with my brother and SIL.

I have a professional person with whom I talk once or twice a month about all the troubles and he already told me I needed to distance from the situation by claiming more time for myself but that is easier said than done when you all live in the same house. Going to France however would literally mean creating distance between me and the ‘problem’ and I knew hiking could give me more peace of mind.

It turned out to be THE BEST decision of 2020. I will tell about the hikes in other blogs but they did what I hoped they would, I got out of my head and found peace of mind again, and it rekindled my passion for walking.

In hindsight the whole situation at home has taught me a lot about (dealing with) mental illlness and about myself. We’re not even close to an end to this situation and it’s not easy to realise that he can’t always control the anger and suspicion and that it simply happens to him but by distancing myself mentally I can handle it better. That doesn’t mean distancing from the person but from the situation and there are a few things that help me.

I use mindfulness to delve into memories that give me a good feeling, reliving them almost from hour to hour and thus taking my mind away from the worries. The roadtrip to Scotland in 2016 with friends I met on Twitter has been an anchor that helped me through the darkest moments. Long walks, usually on Sundays, help me boost my energy and clear my mind, while enjoying nature’s beauty. I also read a lot, listen to music from my youth (going down memory lane) and try to make time for creative hobby’s.

Furthermore I learned how important it is to talk about it with other people . I’m grateful to have family, friends and people at work who I can trust outside of my family at home. Especially the chats with far away but very close friends help me on a daily basis. Sharing my troubles with them doesn’t solve the problem, but helps to make the burden less heavy.

The Freedom to Take a Walk

Last Sunday I went for a walk. Not the first time this year and it reminds me that I need to post some photos and info from my other walks this year (I wanted to write a blog after each walk but so far that didn’t work out).

The walk felt a bit strange. I usually go out on my own for a walk on Sunday and last Sunday was no exception to it. What made it different was the fact that I was wondering if I will be allowed to go out for a Sundaywalk the following week also.

In this troubled and worrying time, with the Corona virus spreading globally around, I already try to avoid most and close contact with other people outside of my family, but I think there are way more measures necessary to keep the threat contained. The time for appeal to common sense is over, we need clear decisions and vigor. With my husband (severe COPD) and my mother (heartcondition) in the high risk group I get very angry when people keep saying it’s just like the flu and keep doing what they always do.

My walk last Sunday was a nice one, through The Malpie, a region with wet heather and fens. Let’s hope I can soon walk there again with a less heavy mind and soul.

At the moment we’re still allowed to go out and I will be walking tomorrow. Walk while I have the freedom to do it.

Carpe Diem

Adventure begins where plans end…

Finally the day I have been looking forward to for so long has arrived. In only 7 hours my son and I will be on our way to Scotland. And on Wednesday our longdistance walk will begin: Walking the West Highland Way from Milngavie to Fort William. Suitcases and backpacks are packed, and boarding passes are ready.

When I started writing this blog I was in a not so happy mindset, a lot of negative and bad things had happened, and had taken a lot of my joy and excitement away. As simple as they were the items I wrote about helped me to get that back. This little written journey towards my big journey showed me again why I chose to do this and what I was looking forward to: finally return to Scotland and enjoy the beautiful scenery of one of the most amazing places there, the Scottish Highlands. And so excitement is building. And with it also came a little bit fear. Will I really be able to do this, will my body allow me to complete this journey. I always say we can do more than we think and age is just a number. Will I be able to prove I’m right? Well, there is no turning back now, and even if there was I would never do it. And I guess it’s normal to get a bit scared shortly before a dream comes true, like this quote states:

A Mindfull Sundaywalk

I went out for a walk yesterday. Normally I have a plan where I want to go but this time I went without one. I decided to go where my feet wanted to take me, and let it be all about the journey, not the goal!

It was supposed to be a short walk, an hour and a half or so, but turned out into a 20km hike through woods and on the moor of the Strabrechtse Heide. Luckily I always take my backpack with me, just in case. As usual after a few kilometers I found my pace and what I call ‘adjustment to the world around me’, paying closer attention to whatever comes along and on my way, buildings, paths and nature.

Some years ago I followed a workshop Mindfullness. I was having issues with chronic hyperventilation at that time, and was looking for ways to treat it. Yoga helped me with it, but I heard about the benefit of mindfullness and was curious to learn more about that as well.

In short mindfullness means to be in the ‘now’. Not thinking of the past, not about the future, but focus on what happens right this moment, what you do, what you see, where you are. I was hooked right from the beginning. It helped me not only to get the hyperventilation under control, it became a tool to relax and find inner peace when I felt nervous or restless. Mindfullness requires no special equipment or place, it can be practiced in every situation, at home, at work, in a crowd or when alone. For me it works fantastic, especially in times of tension and anxiety, but also during my walks.

Walking in a mindfull way has taught me that there is so much more to see around me than I see at first glance. The great views, many colors of green, the changing pattern and colors of the sky. Even weeds are beautiful when you pay more attention to it.

Today I walked some new paths and some familiar ones. But the familiar ones looked new as well, now that I was walking them in a different season. Different flowers were blooming, grasses grew so high they were blooming too, and formerly bare trees now wore green leaves.

Memorial stone for the crew of the bomber that crashed here in WWII

On my way I also passed memorials of WWII. One was a stone with a plate to remember the crew of bomber that crashed there in August 1942.

The other one is the foundation of a hidingplace in the woods where 30 men hid from December 1943 untill September 1944. They hid in ‘Kamp Dennenlust’, as it was called, initially to prevent to be taken to Germany for ‘Arbeitseinsatz’, but later fighting as partisans. Also pilots who were crashed found a temporary refuge here. People from the small village Moorsel, where I had lunch today, secretly brought food if any was available. To see the remains of this camp and imagine how it must have been for them to live there, I realised once more how fortunate I am to be able to walk here in freedom.

Walks in these woods and on the moor are always peaceful and quiet, noises of daily life inaudible. The wind in the trees, singing birds, crickets and my own footsteps are the only sounds I hear. And this time a choir of froggs welcomed me when I came out of the woods and entered the moor. So funny. A few cyclists, walkers and a horserider were the only other people I met on my way.

After 4 1/2 hour I returned home, physically tired but happy, mentally refreshed and with enough energy to face another week. It was a great journey!

Eyes, windows to the world

Foto door Mark Arron Smith op Pexels.com

I have a bad eyesight since I was a young girl. My windows to the world are fogged windows so I wear glasses since I was 10, followed by contactlenses when I was 18, and back to glasses again in my late forties.

Ten years ago my eyesight had become such a problem that a visit to an eyedoctor was required and it showed that I had severe cornea damage on both eyes. My windows were not only fogged but cracked as well. The cause is still unknown but I’m wearing very special contactlenses ever since. These skleralenses transfer my foggy, cracked windows into cristalclear and clean windows and my vision fully depends on them. The only other option is a cornea transplant. After years of trouble I finally had a clear and sharp view thanks to my artificial windows. They literally opened a new world to me.

There was also cataract slumbering in my right eye at that time but it never caused any problems. Until February 2018. My eyesight became blurry and adjusting the lenses didn’t solve the problem, surgery was needed. And that was the second event why I am where I am now, almost on my way to Scotland again.

After cataract surgery the patient is not allowed to bend down, lift heavy or do anything that can cause pressure on the eye. So, since I have a fysically tough job, I knew I had to stay at home for 2 weeks. At least that was the normal procedure, little did I know I would be at home much longer afterwards. I decided to go out for a walk after surgery every day, as soon as I was allowed to, in order to stay fit until I could return back to work and thus prevent living those weeks on the couch. In January I started with walks on Sunday and 2 days after surgery I went out for a walk every day.

And that is how it all started. Stepping out of my front door, ‘armed’ with sunglasses because it was bright and sunny that month, and I simply started walking. Not knowing that I would become really addicted to walking, let alone long distance walking!

There was one condition I gave myself though: take pictures on your walk!

But that’s another blog….