Through the polders around Verrebroek

Start on the church square of Verrebroek (V), borough of Beveren. The monumental tower of the 15th-century St. Lawrence Church will be your beacon during this polder tour. On this Verheyenplein, keep the bust of professor and dissecter Philip Verheyen (1648-1710) on your right. Cross through the traffic lights at the old village pump to the Pater Vergauwenstraat. Past the police station, the library and OC De Verre (name of the former river) you walk through a new neighborhood to a crossroads with the brick Chapel of Our Lady from 1833 1 . Follow the signs to the left to the Spanish Fort (military stronghold in the 17th century) and the football fields. At those football fields you turn left, towards house numbers 8 and 10, into a clinker path that quickly becomes a tiled path. Bend along with this path and follow the Philip Verheyenpad to the left at the crossroads. You come to the top of the dike of the Spanish Fort and follow it to the left, leaving the Priesteragiestraat to the left. Behind the higher Verrebroekse Dijk on the right is the Koningskieldrechtpolder and a building of Tabaknatie squeaks, the first sign of the Waaslandhaven behind it with, among other things, the Verrebroek dock. At a crossroads, take the Sint-Michielsstraat on the left. This is also a dike road between fields, meadows and orchards, in this wetland area where peat was once cut. Concrete turns into cobblestones as you approach the Kieldrechtsebaan. Cross this busier road, with a tree chapel on the corner for Saint Anthony 2, carefully. Follow Hoge Wilde straight ahead and immediately turn right and ignore Turfbanken. The road curves along to another tree embankment. Keep following until you can turn left into the Braakstraat at some houses and a transport company. At a brick Our Lady's Chapel, a gravel path leads you to the right, towards the greenhouses of the Zwaantje district. Here you will encounter the Verheyenpad (in the opposite direction) for the last time. Turn left here in Zwaantje (without name sign), in a residential area with also some impressive large brick barns from around WW II. At the T-junction you cross the Fortuinstraat diagonally left to a wide agricultural path between two farms. This part of Fortuinstraat leads to a narrow traffic road. Here just to the right and about 50 m further left into the straight Lepelstraat. Now you have left for 1.5 km all the way to the field, in an open landscape full of canals and drainages of the Vrasenepolder. The expressway E34 and the church tower of Vrasene are getting closer and closer. Along the way (with signs of a GR route and the Polderland cycle route) you cross the Groenstraat. Between orchards the road turns to the left and a little further via a culvert to a large company on the right. Cross the culvert and on the other bank of the waterway turn left onto the wide grassy path past the fruit trees. About 700 m further you come to a business zone and a recent roundabout (with inn Wit Huis on the right, direction E34 and Vrasene). Cross the busy Verrebroekstraat to the cycle path towards the port, between the companies and the new Schoorhavenweg. The path takes you to the railing of the harbor road, which is apparently popular with motorcyclists. This way you cross different waterways and grass dikes. On the other side of the bridge, just before a roundabout towards the port and expansion works, take a left onto the Gemaalweg, to the pumping station 3. There you only get a good view of the cooling towers of Doel, the port companies and the plain in front of it (quicksand!). This surreal landscape at the end of the world disappears from your field of vision again, when you turn left around the Watermolen pumping station and then from the Watermolendijk (together with the closed higher grass dike towards Fortje) immediately take the Sluisstraat to the left to the church