De Kaloot Beach, Borssele: a fossil hunter's paradise

De Kaloot beach lies slightly off the beaten track and is, especially at weekends, a pleasantly quiet spot. It's worth cycling there on purpose. Here, the Western Scheldt narrows and you have a great view of passing ships. The landscape shifts strikingly from nature to industry, with wind turbines and a view of the nuclear power station. Once, De Kaloot was a sizeable nature and recreation area with creeks, salt marshes, wide beaches and a campsite. Today it's a small nature reserve — but with a remarkable secret from the deep past. The beach is one of the few places in the Netherlands where fossils can be found: shells, shark teeth, ray teeth and bone fragments from the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs, millions of years old. Worth noting too is the daily environmental monitoring programme around the nuclear plant: employees in white suits walk the beach looking for dead birds, recording possible ecological changes. De Kaloot is a fascinating mix of nature, industry, science and prehistory.