The Sycamore at the Border

Around 2001 or 2002, workers laid a deep sewer under the road beside this sycamore and cut away the roots that ran beneath it. When the inspectors came back in 2003, the tree showed no loss of condition at all. The national tree register gives it a name that doubles as directions: 'Esdoorn net voor de grens', the maple just before the border. It stands at Grensstraat 2, south of Nispen, with Belgium a short way further down the road. The Bomenstichting's Landelijk Register Monumentale Bomen bands its planting to the decade 1890 to 1900, which makes it roughly 126 to 136 years old. It is 2.96 metres round at chest height and 18 metres tall. The register last recorded it in April 2023, and an aerial photograph from spring 2026 still shows its crown at the edge of the grass, with no other tree within about 30 metres. That register is the only source we have for this sycamore. Nobody has written down who planted it, or why a sycamore went in here on the border road. If you know, tell us. The ground it stands on is listed as pasture, so look from the road edge rather than walking in. There is no train out here: it is about 1.9 kilometres south of the village centre at De Lind, roughly a 25 minute walk, and 1.4 kilometres beyond the oak of Nispen.