Storm!

Last Thursday we had the biggest storm for years. 66 lorries were blown over on the road and the entire national rail network was shut down  I think for the first time ever. At the weekend, the official trails on the Heuvelrug were shut, which was fair enough as a lot of people go quite fast there and you could imagine dangerous situations developing with trees down all over the place, but what about the woods on the other side of Wageningen where you don't have to stick to designated paths? A small group of us ventured out on Saturday morning to see how it was.

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Fallen tree

It was indeed quite dramatic with large numbers of very big trees all over the place.  There were a lot of Scots Pines, I suppose because their needles caught the wind, and a lot of very tall trees, probably as they caught the wind sticking out above the canopy. It was notable that many were not uprooted, but snapped off part way up. Fortunately, there is quite a network of paths, so it was no problem to wend our way round some, and crawl under or over others. There were also thousands of smaller branches over the paths, and many of them smooth, wet and slippery, so we had a lot of practice hopping over them whilst avoiding touching them at an angle with our front wheels, which would then be a recipe for a crash. In places, it was a bit like being in snow; slow progress and high energy expenditure. All in all, it was quite spectacular, especially where the trees found something other than trees to fall on.

Storm damage

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