canal street bench

This bench is located on the Vaartstraat in the Uitkerkse Polder nature reserve.

1500 years ago there was an extensive area of mudflats and salt flats here , but human interaction with the tidal landscape has given us the polders. The canals were silted up so that the salt pans developed into salt marshes on which medieval people grazed sheep and built farms. They protected the farms with local ring dikes, the beginnings of today's Oostkustpolder. In the fight against the water , man built a labyrinth of ditches, canals and ditches.

Author: Willem Vandenameele