SP 17 (02) Halsteren - Moerstraten

Brabantse Delta - The wild land was cultivated from power centers such as Bergen, Steenbergen, Wouw and the monastery village of Huijbergen. We encounter the narrow canals, which were dug from the 12th century as peat or nut canals to drain the land and to drain the peat, several times. After that, the land was made suitable for agriculture, but most sand farmers led a marginal existence. Here and there a small farm still reminds of the poverty. In the marine clay areas it was a different story. Here we walk through a much larger-scale landscape, over dikes that are sometimes centuries old. The reclamation has been going on here for centuries. The first dikes were built in the 12th century, but the sea regularly broke through them. During the storm floods of the 15th and 16th centuries, a large number of villages in the clay polders were swallowed up by the waves. Nevertheless, the reclamation has always continued. The youngest polders are only a few years old and are located near Bergen op Zoom, where, thanks to the Delta Works, entire residential areas are now rising on the former seabed.