"Loppersum" Loppersum by nighthawk

Childhood memories........from the day I could be trusted on a bycicle almost once every week I cycled the 4 kms to this little place.
And back home of course ;-).

Loppersum is a nice enough village but when I was there the other day, it was almost abandoned. Too silent to my liking!

Welcome to Loppersum ... just do not trip over the suitcases ;-).

Church Loppersum

When I was a kid, Loppersum felt like a bigger place than it really was. You had shops there, more than in my village Garrelsweer.
Haha, I soon enough grew out of that thought.
But some great memories I have of the swimming pool of Loppersum. It wasn't a chloride bath like most men made places to swim but it was a pool filled with salty water from a natural well deep down.
The pool has just been renovated, the filtering system renewed, and I cannot wait to take a dive!
The water tasted horrible and you couldn't see a finger once you dived under but it was so great for the skin! And it was as if you got a tan quicker than where ever.

One horrible memory I got in that pool: diving off and loosing my bikini trousers. How frantic I searched to get it back and how glad I was it wasn't chloride water! lol

Loppersum might now be a sleepy village but once, between 1500 and 1600, it was not as quiet as that.
The Netherlands where then under Spanish reign and there were fights between the Spanish and the Orange folks.
Especially in the province of Groningen the noble men were forced to be what government, settled in the only city of the province, Groningen, told them to be.

Just outside Loppersum lived a man named Johan de Mepsche. He was in favor of the Spanish and he also did not allow other royal men to be as powerful as he was and to be assured no one would ever be, he ruled with an iron fist.
At certain point (1577 or so) his power was taken from him because the Spanish no longer were in reign and Johan was held prisoner in his own house, chained as a dog and guarded by 50 soldiers.
Johan however was set free after a year or so and he was then forced to flee to northern Germany. After some time he returned (1580 or so) and again he proved to be as Spanish favoured as he ever was, for he started to reconquer what he claimed was his.
In 1585 he got sick and he died of the plague.

It seems he was buried in the church in Loppersum but up to now, nothing has been found to prove he really was buried there.
Story is, that the folks from Loppersum were too embarressed to have him there and simply destroyed any proof.

• Pros:Small, hard to get lost.
• Cons:Small, hard to get lost ?
• In a nutshell:Better than worse and worse than good.