Weerribben
An old peat bog: after centuries of peat production now a nature reserve to explore leisurely by canoe or silent electric boat.
Peat once was popular fuel enabling people to make it through the long, cold winters. With shovels it was dug and cut into bricks, row after row, layer after layer, creating the channels that we now sail down. Along each channel a strip of land was kept on which the dug out peat was spread to dry. Thus the Weerribben came into existence: long, alternating strips of land and water.
In the beginning of last century, when coal became the new fuel, the winning of peat slowly came to an end and was replaced by reed and cane production. Since the reclamation of the Noordoostpolder, the adjoining Weerribben also has become dryer. Many strips of land have changed into dense marshy forest, while others have been kept open for reed growing. And so we sail here through a nature reserve which is largely the work of human hands.
Photos of the week: Weerribben, Overijssel, Netherlands 2008
καιρός remembered 
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