I live in Belgium, originally from The Netherlands. Both countries are essentially build up like this: city center - suburban stretch - city center with farm land in between. There is virtually no real nature to be found in both countries with the exception of a small part of southern Belgium. What natural parks we have are basically large artificial plots of nature. Every single inch of these countries is managed beyond belief.
Want to enjoy the few plots of land that are deemed ‘nature’? So do the 30 million other people living here. The most remote part in The Netherlands is a point at which you are, hold your hats, 11 km removed from the nearest road. A two and a half hour hike at best.
It’s suffocating. There are people everywhere, all the time. You can hear cars at any point in these countries. There is no natural silence. It drives me nuts.
come to Scotland comrade we got hills and shit
Scotland is very, very nice. The coast of England also has some nice cliffsides which you can sit and ponder on
Both Scotland and Sweden sound like nice options to go to at one point
A lot of people from the Nethelands moving in where I used to live in Sweden for that reason.
Also that it was a dying town with no jobs that is steadily spiraling downwards so people pick up drug/alcohol addictions to cope or move away meaning that housing is cheap. But if you want solitude it is pretty swell.
My father in law actually bought a piece of land with a small house in the woods in Värmland, lots of Dutch people over there. His closest neighbours, some hundreds of meters away, are also Dutch lol.
Yeah, that is where I grew up. Lots of Dutch people.
Beautiful country. When I was there, I was only in the southwestern part of the highlands. I’d love to see the rest.
Edinburgh and the coastal path around the east of it towards North Berwick should be on your list.
I’d love to visit Aberdeen and Loch Ness
Never goto aberdeen, its what the map on fallout 3 was based on.
Try perthshire and loch lomond instead.
I hear Georgia has the most beautiful outdoors, all while being affordable to travel in
It does. Also the Stans if we are going in that direction. Would love to ride my bike through Kyrgyzstan
That is a great goal to have, you should do it!
The Bicycle Diaries by Slay Guevara
When I was there (probably including several of the places you mentioned), one thing I thought was nice was that there was a sort of commons in place. Within walking distance for working-class people, there was woods that people wouldn’t litigate you for walking on.
It’s wild to see how western and central Europe were even more razed and leveled a few decades ago, and the cities even more choked with cars than today.
The expansion of lawn and field across every possible hectare is a plague upon the Earth, though. We really don’t need to stuff the planet as full as we can with people.
I agree with your last comment but there are people who get very upset when you say it out loud and when you ask them why they get especially angry.
I feel a similar way in Germany. I wonder what people mean here when they say they like spending time in nature. “What nature,” I think to myself.
Any other year I’d say cone to America, we got wilderness for days, but not this year or the next 4… or 8…
It’s a consequence for most urban/industrial countries, especially dense ones like the Netherlands, wildlife and nature are pretty much phased out as the biodiversity is usually at odds with the industrial nature of the country’s transformation. It’s a common issue in most of Europe, and in some places in the global south that are also industrializing rapidly.
You speak out of my soul, comrade. It’s so fucking exhausting, everywhere you go there is noise. It feels like you can’t escape from it :/
There needs to be a rewilding push in the Benelux
