Zeelandic Flanders
Province
Enveloped by the Western Scheldt and the North Sea, Zeelandic Flanders with its vast beaches is a popular destination of bathers and nature lovers. The island has two major nature reserves. The Zwin, in the West, is a famous site for finding 40 million year old shark teeth. The Drowned Land of Saeftinghe, in the East, is the largest salt meadows area of Europe. Zeelandic Flanders lies next to Belgium, lending it a Burgundian atmosphere. However, the beaches, dunes and vast polders are very Zeelandic. Walking or cycling through Zeelandic Flanders takes you to places such as the artistic village of Groede or the town of Philippine famous for its mussels, but also to fortified towns such as Hulst and Sluis.
Since the creation of the Zeelandic Flanders hiking network the Borderlands Route has a new variant: Eastern Zeelandic Flanders.
We encounter numerous creeks, forts and lines. We are introduced to the small remaining defenses of Sas van Gent and with the nearly complete ramparts of Hulst. In Sas van Gent we can see how narrow the channel once was; the Marina and the view from the large swing bridge shows how wide the channel is now. We walk through the nature reserve of Canisvliet and over the edge of ‘Big Island’. Leaving Hulst, we follow the Line Dike for a long stretch.
If the water level of the Western Scheldt permits it, we stroll through a large part of the largest brackisch water marsh of Europe, Saeftinghe, with its visitor center at Emmadorp. Otherwise, follow the outside edge of the dike! The quiet inner dikes lead us to Hontenisse (the nose into the Honte = the Western Scheldt), now Kloosterzande.
An old medieval winding dike takes us to Kampen. Here we walk over old drainage locks that discharged the water from the polder onto the Hellegat in times past. The land has now been reclaimed, but there are talks of removing the polders to restore the ecosystem of the Western Scheldt. Once we cross the Western Scheldt Dike, we follow the border between land and water, whether we head for Perkpolder (summer ferry www.de-atol.nl) or Terneuzen.