#neercanne

Repost @marina.pauly #apostelhoeve #neercanne #mergelland #jekervallei #jekerdal #visitmaastricht #zuidlimburg #zondaginhetzuiden #magnifiekzuidlimburg #limburginbeeld (bij Apostelhoeve) https://www.instagram.com/p/Ch5NWbHNybi/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

The journey ended similarly to the way it began: with #thistles on #castle walls. Last August I visited my brother in #Maastricht, and took so many hundreds of photos I am still posting them. This one evening I hopped on my bike to find #Neercanne. It was the first #castle I had been told about, but the last I had a chance to see on the trip. As I moved southward, the city gave way to a landscape that was at once fantastical and yet simultaneously simple. I hadn’t realized how #bucolic the #Netherlands can be until I arrived, and this remarkably rural section of the city felt as if I had accidentally biked backwards in time.

Then I saw a dirt road.
It looked rather private and not where the traffic was intended to go.
Naturally, I took it. After sneaking past a couple snooty #Edwardian manors (which I can only assume were thoroughly haunted), the wooded path gave way to a startling and magical place that was neither on my itinerary, nor within my expectations. Yawning, wide-open fields, hidden #vineyards, old waterwheels that still worked mills, and knolls upon knolls upon knolls. Alongside unimpressed cows grazing below secret passage doors into the ancient limestone tunnels beneath Mount St. Pieter, a precariously narrow bridge beckoned me further into the #pastoral painting come to life, dazzling me with color and space as the cranky #Dutch sky fused and shifted it’s clouds as if fumbling with a load of laundry that was just too big to carry. To my surprise, I actually had found a shortcut to the Neercanne #Chateau. So while I was lost, I had ironically found what I had been seeking, quite by coincidence. Which seemed pretty normal that day, where everything was touched with some sort of ancient magic. And I had this feeling as I gazed and snapped my camera. My eyes were welling up; I couldn’t quite fathom what it was. All the space, air, grass, and farms conspired something deep in me.

I only understood later, through what #Europeans of the past loved about the New World, which became my heritage. The feeling that this landscape right in the middle of #Limburg conjured was distinctly, humbly, quite surprisingly #American. ▫️ #akaXN #TheRealXN (at Château Neercanne) https://www.instagram.com/p/B5BUnrunGCX/?igshid=17tmdpn86qvek

Endless inspiration

Castle Neercanne