August 2021: We quickly head towards "Groote Heide", which we soon reach after two sluggish kilometers of city.
New territory.
Small but beautiful, as they say, a piece of magical heathland spreads out on the outskirts of the city.
"The Groote Heide is a nature reserve of almost 250 hectares between the Dutch city of Venlo and the border with Germany. On the German side, the Krickenbecker lakes are directly adjacent. The Groote Heide is characterized by its diverse landscape with heathland, fields, pastures and sandy grassland as well as coniferous and mixed forests.
For centuries, the area was used for agriculture, with sheep keeping the vegetation low. From the middle of the 19th century, the Groote Heide served the Dutch army as a shooting practice area and during the Second World War as a military airport.
After the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, the area became the German air force base "Venlo Air Base", later also an outpost of a concentration camp. After the end of the war, the airfield was blown up. Nevertheless, many remains and ruins still remain on both sides of the border, including the remains of a huge round-arch hall that served as a hangar. On the border between Germany and the Netherlands there is now a memorial site that tells the story of the Venlo air base. Since 1946, the Venlo Gliding Club has used part of the former runway. Artists and craftspeople have set up their studio in a former hangar, which is run by the Dutchwoman Wilhelmina Spolders. ..."
www1.wdr.de/fernsehen/wunderschoen/niederrhein-134.html
It is indeed beautiful here, so we take a break before the time; enjoy the sun on a bench in the shade of the birch trees and watch the hustle and bustle at the gliding airfield in the distance.