Hageven - Plateaux Pelt 9.5km blue route

The Hageven

Between Borkel and Schaft, two small spots in Holland, and the Lommel Colonie, close to the Belgian border, stretches an immeasurable and very marshy heathland. In the south it is crossed by the Dommel. It is a place of terrifying ferocity. For me, the passage of this harsh wasteland is always a source of various emotions and sensations. Some moments I feel that I will never get out alive and that a treacherous swamp will swallow me up. No distant rev clock comes to my rescue to show me around. In this place, big with loneliness, I feel small, miserable, powerless, lost and full of fear. It is only after hours of attempts, detours, back and forth and falls that I finally enter the ground of a less hostile heath... And when I finally cross the Dommel along the shaky bridge, I feel like an escapee from this inhospitable wilderness.

This is what painter Charles Wellens wrote in 1911 about the Hageven barely 100 years ago, our grandfathers still knew it that way.

50 years later - in 1961 - only a shadow remains of this landscape.

The Dommel had been straightened a few years earlier, swamps largely filled in, dunes levelled... Agriculture became increasingly large-scale and began to lay claim to marginal land.

Time for action:
When the municipality of Neerpelt leases more than 47 ha of dunes with dry and wet heathland, with fens and reed land to the Belgian Nature and Bird Reserves for 30 years, the HAGEVEN is a fact. Gaston Claassen is the first curator. He was succeeded after his death by Hubert Lehaen, who for many years made every effort to expand the nature reserve. The Hageven is now 250 ha in size and together with the Plateaux, just across the border, forms an impressive nature reserve of more than 600 ha.

The Hageven is like a mosaic of different types of nature:
The flanks and tops of the dunes are the driest soils of the area. The sand no longer sprays as it did in earlier times. Bunt grass and Shaggy Hair Moss have largely fixed the sand. With some control measures, we are now trying to create open sand plains again, good for Digging Wasps, Wheatear, Lichens and Sandhill Beetles. On the dry and wet sandy soils the heath grows, but not nearly as massively as the visitor would expect from a heath reserve. Grasses such as Crooked Smele and Pipe Straw take up the most space. Only extensive grazing by Galloway cattle and mowing can keep these grasses in check. Without this management, there would be no heathland in the nature reserve within decades.

Nature restoration:
From 2006, a number of large-scale management works were carried out as part of the Life project Dommeldal to give the heath more opportunities again. Large areas have been ploughed (removal of the top layer) resulting in a bare, nutrient-poor soil on which the heath can germinate again. Butterfly species such as the Heivlinder and the Heideblauwtje benefit from this expansion in surface area. Botanically interesting species of the wet heath can also seize their chance: Legbreak, Beaked beak, Bell gentian and the Gentian blue and Sundew.

The first sign of afforestation can be found in the Hageven Gagel. It blooms in spring with the dark red strikingly pleasantly scented catkins. The Gageleer beer that you can consume in the Curlew, has this as an ingredient instead of Hops.

Forests are scarce in the Hageven. 200 meters east of the Wrong Lord is a last remnant of an afforestation attempt around 1890. A plot with crooked Scots Pine. In a few smaller places grows a trouser forest with mainly Willows and Alders. Here and there are gnarled Birches and Pines, which give the vast landscape a somewhat weathered impression. In winter you can sometimes find the Klapekster here.

Typical for the Hageven are the numerous fens. The LIFE project makes it financially possible to rebuild a number of previously drained fens. This was done on the basis of old aerial photographs. Many dragonfly species will benefit from this fen restoration. In the Hageven Plateaux you will find Kempense Heidelibel, Bandheidelibel, Beekoeverlibel and Bronlibel.

The Dommel:
In the 50s of the last century, the Dommel was straightened to speed up the water discharge and thus make agriculture possible up to the riverbank. As a result, the entire area dried out so that the swampy core of the Hageven became much smaller. This wrong intervention from earlier times has now been partially corrected. In 2008, 10 meanders were excavated. The water thus remains longer in the nature reserve, so that it remains wetter again, which increases the quality of nature and also improves the Dommel itself as a biotope for fish, plants and macrofauna. It is also a great improvement in terms of landscape. The hiker now sees a river as it should look: winding in long loops.

Because the Hageven is such an important and large area, the management is done by several curators.