Holiday walk.

[sister_luck]

We did a holiday park break over the long Carnival weekend again, but I've got to say I can't spend the entire time within the confines of the park, I need to see more than playgrounds, petting zoo and swimming pool (and shops and restaurants).

With the Lüneburg Heath around us, there was plenty of landscape around us.

I'd been there once before, as a child, with my father and my grandparents. The names on the road signs were familiar and when we drove towards the town I knew I had stayed in, I spotted the words Pietzmoor on a sign and that rang a bell. We parked close to the holiday home village where we had rented a cottage and went for a walk around the Piet's bog.

Efforts are under way to restore this rain-fed bog - it was drained and there was a lot of peat extraction even as late as the 1980s there and you can still see where the peat was cut - the rectangular holes have filled with water.


Drainage channel (which I think is now used to put water back into the bog) and meadow where sheep are usually kept.




Raised paths take you around the bog:



The birch trees are not supposed to be there - they only grow where the bog is too dry:



So when you see a dead tree, this means the conservationists are happy:



Same dead trees:



Different dead trees:



Here you can clearly see the straight lines left behind from the peat extraction:



Spooky:



We heard lots of bird chatter - I suppose the cranes that breed there have already arrived, but we didn't see any of them.