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Published: August 5th 2019
No museums today. We decided to take in some special local scenery and wander the backcountry roads a bit. We started off by locating the Doreleijersweg in Boxtel, named after one of my ancestors who constructed it on his own land to bypass the government toll road and give locals a break. What a rebel! We drove the full one kilometre length of the road, quite narrow and part of it not paved, to then wind our way towards Oisterwijk.
Oisterwijk is a National Park with mature forests, many biking paths, many fens (little lakes), as well as great little restaurants and very expensive homes in the small village. We stopped at a restaurant in the forest called Meneer (Mr.) Van Eyck, to just enjoy the scenery. The back roads here used to be the main roads and have names dating back to the French occupation. Tall trees on both sides of the road meet overhead to give a bit of a creepy feeling yet peaceful. The roads are narrow and must be shared with bicyclists and the car driver is forced to maintain the speed limit by speed bumps that are designed for just that speed limit. Go too
fast and you might lose control or damage the car.
Next we headed towards the Loonse and Drunense Duinen, sand dunes located near Drunen. I had forgotten how out of place this wonderful acreage of rolling dunes and a few trees looks compared to the rest of the pastoral setting of North Brabant. What a magical place this is and I reminded myself of all the good times we had there as young people. Marion also could not get enough of this place. The weather cooperated to make this quite an enjoyable visit!
By this time, it was about 4pm and we still had one more stop to make: La Trappe, one of only ten Trappist breweries (I’m told) left in the world. The criterion to be called a true Trappist brewery, and the tax benefits that go with it, is that the beer must be brewed by monks at the abbey, that the brewery is supervised by a monk, and that only enough profit can be made to support the abbey. We sampled a beer each, I took the triple (8%) and Marion sampled the white (5.5%) and we picked up a gift pack of all 8
Picnic along the road
Lasted only a few minutes: aggressive wasps were after our food. beers brewed there for future enjoyment. One of them is their Bock Beer, the only Trappist beer of its kind in the world!
This made for a good day and not quite as tiring as yesterday!
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Erwin
non-member comment
Love your travels
Looks like you are enjoying your stay in the old country. I like the way you fortify yourself against the heat by drinking abbey beers. If there’s still time in your itinerary, I recommend a visit to the Hoge Veluwe Park and our favourite art gallery, the Kröller Müller Museum. Something more local: Heusden and Slot Loevestein, War Museum Overloon.