The Lommelse Sahara is a strange desert landscape of pure white sand planted with pine trees.
It occupies an abandoned industrial site in the Kempen region where quartz sand was once mined and a polluting zinc factory killed off all the trees.
This bleak wilderness was later used by a weapons manufacturer to test grenades, but the abandoned wasteland has been turned into a nature reserve, with hiking trails, an observation tower and a lake in a former quarry.
Derek Blyth’s hidden secret of the day: Derek Blyth is the author of the bestselling “The 500 Hidden Secrets of Belgium”. He picks out one of his favourite hidden secrets for The Brussels Times every day.
