Nature and silence at Buitenplaats Vinckeboom in Diepenheim | special overnight stay

When we arrive at Buitenplaats Vinckeboom at the beginning of the evening, we can only guess where we have ended up. Here in Diepenheim, Overijssel, they do not worry about air pollution. There is only a light in the house of manager André Kappert.

He welcomes us enthusiastically, helps unload the luggage – as if we were friends coming to stay – and gives us a tour of the ‘Lodge aan het Weitje’, where we can spend the night in the coming days. The circularly built house looks sleek and modern – with a plywood panel cladding – and yet warm and homely thanks to the vintage-look furniture.

When we wake up the next day and see the sun rise, we are not disappointed by the view. Even though it has only rained in recent weeks, resulting in huge puddles on the site, we see that nature is the most important thing on the 8.5 hectare site.

Orchard with more than a hundred varieties of fruit trees

The six student friends who set up the Vinckeboom want to ‘give the countryside a future again’ with their project. That is why they transformed the poor agricultural land into an orchard with more than a hundred varieties of fruit trees. Holidaymakers are guests on this site and stay in one of the six stylish lodges or – in spring or summer – on one of the five camping pitches with their own sanitary facilities. The site is still under development: the lodges, which are built completely circular, will be expanded in the coming years and the camping pitches will be doubled.

While the children are jumping in the puddles, Kappert approaches us to give us a tour of the grounds that have been created so lovingly. “The Vinckeboom is regularly rented by groups of friends, for family weekends or working weekends,” he says. The country estate is extremely suitable for that, because in addition to the individual lodges there is a communal living room, or a ‘barn’, as they call it here. Here you will find a kitchenette, several showers and a large table and bench. It is the space where you can eat together, have drinks or play games and meet other guests.

Dipping in the swimming pond

Furthermore, there is mainly silence at the Vinckeboom, except for the neighing of horses Amara and Helena. When the weather is nice you can dip in the swimming pond (or if you have Wim Hof ​​ambitions; all year round), have fun on the nearby sports fields and enjoy beautiful walks in the area.

But during our stay it is rain, rain, rain all the time and so we decide to visit the nearby towns. Our first stop is Enschede, where you will find the child-friendly Museum Factory. There is a natural history collection and the museum has an observatory on the roof, where you can look at stars through the dome in the winter months.

The kind of place you wish every community would have

But we do not know whether Willem Wilmink was right with his poem – which also adorns the wall of the renovated Melkfabriek. In 1987, after previous devastating poems about the city, he wrote; ‘What was once a sad sight has risen like a phoenix from the ashes. Enschede, Enschede, Enschede!’ But since in the winter months the textile city of yesteryear is overrun by Germans who come to do their shopping at the markets, we are completely stuck on the way to the center.

We decide to turn around and after a short visit to Deventer, including the cutest Walstraat, we continue to the Erve Brooks pancake farm. That’s the kind of place you want every community to have. Here you will find the ‘inner courtyard’; a large glass room with thousands of plants and a parrot that says ‘peek-a-boo’. While you can read a good book or have a conversation here, children clamber above your heads in the wooden play structures. When the weather is nice there is an adventure and barefoot path and – next to the restaurant – there is an indoor playground.

Tired but satisfied, we return to our ‘Lodge aan het Weitje’. The surroundings are slowly hidden from our view again and we settle down on the couch with the bottle of red welcome wine under a blanket. You don’t have to do anything here, and that’s wonderful.