Be guided through the estate called "Het Lankheet"

If you really want to get to know Het Lankheet, let yourself be led by one of the guides. They take you to unknown places where the ordinary visitor is not allowed to go. And they will tell you everything you want to know. About the origins of the landscape from the ice age to today. About the unctuous details of past aristocratic owners. And about technical feats from times long gone, which are high on the agenda again just now.

With guide Wim Het Lankheet in

I had the pleasure of walking with guide Wim. And if I learned one lesson, it is this: Het Lankheet is not a hiking area. Lankheet is a story. A story in which you also happen to walk beautifully. Wim knows every path in the area. He can elaborate on every meadow. He knows the forest like the back of his hand. Wim talks about the Lankheet as if he was born there. A little later he turns out to have been. His grandfather lived here and worked as a forester; his parents still lived with his grandparents. He points out the house to me. Shows the window behind which he was born. His whole childhood he walked around here every weekend. Enviable. Well for me, a man who spent his entire youth among the sixties-gallery flats of Rotterdam-Zuid. A man who now listens spellbound to Jim's stories.

Rich cultural history, history of the rich

We are still in the Fieldwork Center when Wim outlines the history of Lankheet. About the Lankheet family, for example, who lived here. But even more about that other family. The Van Heek family. It is 1895 and the estate is bought by Gerrit Jan van Heek, textile magnate. Known for the G.J. van Heek Park in Enschede, where a 6.5-meter-high granite memorial pole also commemorates him. His descendants still own Het Lankheet. Gerrit Jan van Heek, as well as his son Gerrit Jan van Heek jr., often come up during the tour of Het Lankheet. For example, the character sketches about the almost feudal relationships between capitalist and worker of this era. It is unimaginable today, but hundreds of meters of sandy path had to be raked weekly with a hand rake when Van Heek entered the estate on Fridays. But Wim also tells how the Van Heeks shaped the estate. The coniferous forests they planted for timber production for the Limburg mining industry. How they used the area as hunting grounds. How Van Heek Sr. had a Norwegian hunting lodge built fairly immediately after buying the estate. And how Van Heek introduced the fluid grazing system here.

Flowing meadows

Much of the tour is about the flowing meadows. Literally, because you actually walk across them. But you are also introduced to the irrigation of meadows, a time-honored technique of fertilization. In a nutshell, irrigation is the act of flooding a meadow with water. On one side, the water is flowed out over the land. On the other side, it is recaptured and flowed out over the next pasture. If you do that with lime- and mineral-rich water, the land is immediately fertilized. It sounds simple, but Wim knows how to explain that it sounds simpler that it is. For starters, where do you get the water from? Just down the road, calcareous groundwater comes to the surface and that can be used very well. Only, that's not enough. Now water from the Buurserbeek is also used, which is first purified in the water park. And then: how do you get the water flowing out over the meadows? This requires an ingenious network of ditches. And countless valves that can be opened and closed at will. And even the necessary manual work to close and control the trenches locally. Wim explains the system to me graphically. The way he explains it makes you want to do it yourself. It's like building dams like at the campsite, but for adults.

Intangible heritage

Irrigation may have been around a thousand years old, but the technique quickly fell into oblivion due to fertilizer. In fact, the craft is now in danger of disappearing. There are only two places left in the Netherlands where pastures are irrigated the traditional way. In North Brabant and here in Twente. Through the efforts of Het Lankheet and Natuurmonumenten, the traditional irrigation of grassland has been added to the national Inventory of Intangible Heritage in April 2021. Just like, for example, the Falconry (especially around Valkenswaard), the Maasheggenvlechten (in the northeast of Brabant) and the Griendwerken as in the Biesbosch. And like the Brabant sausage roll, not to mention.

All over again

Climate change has made irrigation topical again. Due to increasingly heavy precipitation, rapid drainage of water is no longer possible without flooding downstream. And the long dry periods also require us to retain water longer. Runoff is one such way to hold water longer. A little further on we walk along the Buurserbeek. Until last year it ran straight, but now it is allowed to meander again. Another intervention due to climate change, Wim explains. This way the water is drained less quickly.

The Water Park

Of course, the tour also runs through the water park and here, too, the eyes are opened. The famous stepping stones that Het Lankheet is known for is a work of art called "Kidney Pools." It consists of two large kidney-shaped basins. Water flows from one pool along the stepping stones to the other, symbolizing the purification of water. Because that is actually what the water park essentially is: one big water purification. Actually, it was a scientific experiment, that whole water park. An experiment by Wageningen University. The research question was: can you purify water with reeds, then use the reeds as biomass for energy generation and all that in combination with water storage in case of flooding. The works of art, special though they may be, were really only requirements because of European funding. The university has since left, though they still left much of their stuff behind. The reed filter still works. Wim says they also experimented with duckweed instead of reeds. In fact, duckweed purifies just as well as reed. The disadvantage was that it attracted large flocks of ducks, which saw the water purifier primarily as a floating buffet.

Miles of information

The tour of Het Lankheet is about 5 kilometers, but you get many miles more of information. About the origins of the higher land (ash trees). About the twin beech trees, which grew together at the roots and why bridal couples are so often found here. About the Kattekersdiek, which means Squirrel Trail. About the deep dark Mérens horses. Well, about what? In short: let the guides of the Historical Circle Haaksbergen lead you through the estate called Het Lankheet. And a (water) world will open up for you.