굴펜-위템‬에서 가장 멋진 ‪20‬개의 천연기념물

Along the rippling Geul River, an impressive marlstone wall rises, a silent witness to Limburg's underground landscape. These calcareous rocks were used for centuries for construction and crafts and now offer a fascinating sight for hikers and nature lovers. The wall forms a natural boundary along the water and, in some places, harbors small caves and niches where flora and fauna have found a home. The contrast of the white marl against the green foliage and the glistening water of the Geul makes this a particularly photogenic and tranquil spot during your walk.

Beautiful part of the walk along the Geul

When the path that has been running between slopes and sloping forest on one side and the Geul on the other side suddenly starts to rise a bit, you know what is coming: part of the marl crops out and offers you a glimpse of what you can discover if you take one of the paths away from the Geul: quarries and marl.

Beautiful path between marl and Geul...

Along the Geul you will repeatedly come across steep slopes made of marl, which has been mined in this region for hundreds of years and is also used in Häuserbai. With a bit of luck you can find fossils.

It's been a long time since I've been up here on the big leaf. But it's always beautiful and part of almost every tour through the Mergelland.

The highest point in the Netherlands coincides with the three-country point and is an important tourist attraction.

As early as the late Middle Ages, the border of the former Aachen Empire, fortified with the Aachen Moat, ran from south to north across the ridge of the Vaalserberg. From 1839 to 1919, the Vaalserberg, with the disputed area of Neutral Moresnet as the fourth country, was even a four-country corner (Vierlandenpunt), which is still remembered in the name of the access road on the Dutch side - Viergrenzenweg. During the First World War, from 1915 to 1918, the high-voltage border barrier stretched along the Belgian-Dutch border for a length of 300 kilometers from the then four-country corner on the Vaalserberg to the Belgian North Sea coast near Knokke. The German invasion of Belgium in 1914 via Gemmenich to Diksmuide, which brought much suffering to the Belgian population, is commemorated by a memorial made of compressed war material at the southern tip of the Vaalserberg, called Via Dolorosa.