Into the Drowned Lands: Your Complete Guide to The Biesbosch

Into the Drowned Lands: Your Complete Guide to The Biesbosch Where a medieval catastrophe gave birth to one of Europe’s last freshwater tidal wildernesses — and where beavers, eagles and whisper-quiet waterways await in the willows. Photo: Travelamāns / Wikimedia Commons (CC0) An introduction to The Biesbosch There is a particular quality of silence in the Biesbosch that takes a moment to place. You are drifting in a small electric boat through a corridor of willows, the engine barely audible beneath you, the only sounds the creak of branches and the distant piping of a reed warbler somewhere deep in the rushes. Then you notice the gnawed stump on the bank — a willow the thickness of your thigh, cut clean at an angle by a set of teeth you realise are very large indeed — and you under…