Bende van de Witte Veer

The Bende van de Witte Veer geocache (GC8BQQ9) was placed in August 2019 by teamcrazyfrog in the De Loonse en Drunense Duinen national park, in Holland. Twenty-four stages and codes scattered through the forest put the visitor on the trail of the treasure of the "White Feather gang". Geocaching HQ made it its geocache of the week in September 2022, then kept it in its end-of-year selection.

The gang, for its part, really did exist. Around 1720, a troop of deserters and vagrants settled in the marshes of the Zandschel, right on the border: enough to change jurisdiction as soon as the authorities came near. On 2 March 1724, a military expedition made dozens of arrests there, among them one of the leaders, Pieter Willemse, known as Swarte Johannes, sentenced to death in 1726. It is to the white feather he wore that the gang owes its name. The buried treasure and its coded messages, on the other hand, belong to the legend, which the region gladly keeps alive, waymarked routes included.

The setting alone is worth the detour: a national park since 2002, some forty square kilometres of shifting sand dunes and pine woods, a landscape rare in northern Europe and nicknamed the "Brabant Sahara", born of clearing and overgrazing from the late Middle Ages onwards. At the end of the route waits a large wooden chest, and the cache collects favourite points.