The Rijnstrangen were a lively part of the river until the Pannerdens Canal was realised in 1709, which altered this part of the river’s course, turning the meanders into a dynamic flood zone.

The reedlands came when the pumping station Oude Rijn was installed further downstream in 1884. It minimised the river flow, changing the entire character of the meanderings from high-dynamic to low-dynamic. Draining the water from the land led to an increasing drought and drove agricultural use of the polderland. In the 1960’s, a new pumping station, Kandia, was installed, and the water inlet at Lobith was blocked for water safety measures. From that moment, the direct connection with the Rhine was severed.

Today, rewilding efforts are working to regain some of the area’s liveliness. The Rijnstrangen are allowed to rise and fall with the river’s main water level with a threshold, making the area a more integrated part of the river system and adding more dynamism. Allowed, because the water levels are carefully regulated by pump station Kandia, and once every four years, they are lowered to expose the riverbed and allow the reeds to regenerate themselves.

Will the river ever flow at their own temperament again? What would the river grow here? Reeds? Forest? Swamp? An underwater world?

Leaving Tolkamer, the road runs alongside the river. Before long, the first industrial sites appear: clay brick stock, conveyor belts, stockpiles of pale gravel, and processing installations are sitting directly on the water’s edge.

Wezendonk Zand en Grind has been operating in this stretch since 1966, extracting sand and gravel from the floodplains between Tolkamer and Spijk. The Rhine deposits coarse sediment across its delta as flow velocity drops; this material feeds the Dutch and Belgian construction industries, washed and graded at the Vliegenwaard installation before being loaded directly onto barges. Wezendonk alone transfers between 600,000 and 800,000 tonnes annually.

The extraction has consequences that extend far downstream. Centuries of channelisation and decades of aggregate mining have starved the river of sediment, causing the riverbed to sink. At Tolkamer, Rijkswaterstaat has conducted experimental gravel supplementation as a kind of reverse-engineering: 70,000 cubic metres of grind added to the riverbed in 2016, and a further 100-centimetre layer in 2019, in an attempt to counteract erosion and maintain the navigable channel. The river is mined upstream and replenished at the border, continuously, in both directions at once.