Wild Wonderful Wednesday: Kabouters and Castles

We live on the Kasteelstraat - Castle Street. It was originally named Church Street (because the church is just down the street), but when the 7 villages combined to make one town, there were too many “Church” streets, so ours was renamed Castle street. This is because our street dead-ends at the canal before continuing on the other side to the castle across the way. Plus, there is another castle in the next village and one which disappeared hundreds of years ago. In other words, castles are not that amazing in our area. 

“Kabouter” (ka-bow-ter) is what the Dutch call gnomes. You know, those general gnomes with the pointy-floppy hats in bright colors you might find in your garden. In Belgium we have the Smurfs (they are blue, but are still basic ally gnomes) and we have a whole amusement park called Plopsaland which is built around gnomes here in Belgium. So we know our gnomes as well. 

Since the new years began Shirley and I are trying to get back to walking daily. When we had a dog it was easy. But Chester has been gone for two and a half years and it is not as easy to find the motivation to get out, especially when the weather is nasty. So we have been encouraging one another to take a walk. We usually walk the same walk every day along our canal past our castle. But today was beautiful and I had to be in town, so we did something different. 

Today we stopped at the castle ruin in our town. The castle is from the 12th century and is surrounded by a simple moat and lots of wonderful walking woods. Perfect for taking a walk (gotta get those 10,000 steps). But it is also where the town has set up a Kabouter walk. There are little hints of kabouters everywhere - kabouters in the trees, kabouter houses in the trees, and all sorts of special tasks for children taking a walk in the woods with their parents. 

It was fun because we have also been making special video’s to send our granddaughter. We take about a minute and talk about “Something new”, but we do it in Dutch. We have looked at snow, a banana, the canal, trees and walnuts, candles, hair and more. So our walk was a perfect time to stop and introduce her to castles, kabouters and even geese (who were walking around making noise). We will send her these video’s bit by bit in the coming weeks. We understand she enjoys watching them with her daddy when they get up in the morning. 

We enjoyed our wild, wonderful walk today. If you come to visit us, we will gladly show you around our castles and introduce you to our kabouters.