Campine

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Campine (Dutch: Kempen) is a moor of swamp and sandy peat, encompassing the east of Antwerp province (with Turnhout as the most important city), part of Limburg province in Belgium (a former coal-producing region) as well as part of Noord-Brabant, a Dutch province.

The region, described as "a desolate flat land" often appears in the books of the prominent Flemish writer Hendrik Conscience (1812-1883), who spent there much of his childhood. Another author who has written many novels playing in the Campine was Georges Eekhoud (1854-1927). It was rendered fertile in the 19th-century and the first decades of the twentieth century.

The Campine gave its name to a 19th-century breed of ornamental chickens, the Campines, now rare, but sufficiently popular in the UK to have its own breeder's club established in 1899. They are a fairly small, closely feathered breed in Silver and Gold varieties, with solid white or golden hackles and iridescent black-green barred bodies. They will lay a fair number of white-shelled eggs.

SS. La Campine was a steamship with auxiliary sails, an early oil tanker that was launched in 1892, sunk by a U-boat in North Sea waters March 13, 1917.

Nowadays, the Campine is becoming a popular destination for tourists searching for a quiet and relaxed weekend. Old farms were transformed into bed and breakfast-hotels, the restaurant and café business is very active and an ingenious network for bicycle tours has come to life the past few years.