Hub Mooren from Bergen op Zoom is this year’s oldest participant in the Nijmegen Three Days Marches. Due to the heat, one day of the traditional Four Days Marches has been canceled. Despite his 90 years and despite the heat, Hub will run 30 kilometers three days in a row, but ‘it will be exciting’.
He stands proudly in his doorway. Neat with a jacket on and a tie. In his house in the center of Bergen op Zoom is a very large bookcase. At the bottom are photo albums. “I’ll have to find the right one, wait a minute.”
Hub is looking for the photos of the first time he ran the Four Days Marches. “That was in 1954, when I was still in military service. Then you just walked with your weapons. That was something.”
For years, Mooren did not follow along. He was a teacher at a school in Ossendrecht: “Everyone had a holiday in Nijmegen, we didn’t. We just had to go to school. As a result, I couldn’t participate for years.”
“After my retirement I went hiking again.”
He only returned to the Four Days Marches after his retirement. Then he had time to walk again and was no longer dependent on the summer holidays. “Yeah, then I went for a walk again.”
Hub was born in Maastricht and walking has always been in his blood. “How did I ever get so mad with walking? I think it started in World War II.” Mooren says that there were no cars and sometimes no bicycles and that he had to walk a lot.
“I had to walk from the center of Maastricht to school with my brothers and sisters, which was 25 minutes there and 25 minutes back.” On Sunday his sisters had to help with the household and the boys went for a walk with father. “After the war I joined Scouting and then I walked the evening four days. That is of course not much.”
During a tour of the Grote Markt in Bergen op Zoom, Mooren tells about a former student of his, Mientje. He had not seen her for 40 years and he met her during the Four Days Marches in 2019. “Mientje told her that I had taught her to walk. I told her that was not true at all.”
Mientje replied that students who walked the evening four days did not have to do homework for a whole week. Students who did not participate were given extra homework. “Mientje then said that everyone knew what they were going to do then: walking.”
“You walk with people you meet there every year.”
Hub is not quite sure if he will make it to the finish line this year. “I’m 90 years old. It’s a huge distance.” And the heat also worries him. But Hub will just start Wednesday morning: “And then we’ll all see.”
Hub also suffers from four-day fever: once you walk in Nijmegen, you don’t want to stop. According to him, this is due to the sense of belonging. “You walk with people you meet there every year. Only happy people, if they don’t have blisters, of course. A big cozy walking family.”