Off-leash area – Mastbos Breda

Last week I took the stick with ‘Mastbos’ out of my jar for the DogBlog Stick Challenge 2023, so last week we went for a walk in Breda with Skadi and Herja. Today my blog with our experience and my review of this area!

The Mastbos

The Mastbos is one of the oldest coniferous forests in the Netherlands. It was created in the 15th century by the nobility as a hunting ground. The forest is named after the tall, straight pine trees that were used here as masts for the VOC ships. The Mastbos is over 500 hectares in size and contains, in addition to conifers, deciduous trees, grasslands and water features. The off-leash area is approximately 82 hectares in size and, in addition to a 4-kilometre ‘sniffing route’ set out by Staatsbosbeheer, it also contains a poodle pool for the warmer days. You can park at the Huisdreef. Many off-leash areas are closed in the summer (or have a leash requirement in the summer), but dogs are welcome off-leash in Mastbos all year round. This means you’ll always have a place to walk your dog, no matter the season.

Our walk

We went to Breda for our walk on Wednesday morning. After we had parked, it didn’t take us much effort to find the blue posts of the sniffing route and start our walk. Here and there it is a bit of a search for the posts along the way, but we have always been able to find our route. It was not very busy that morning I think, we encountered quite a few dogs but I have seen busier off-leash areas so this was a nice relaxed walk in terms of crowds. Skadi and Herja had a great time, running around and sniffing everywhere.
Halfway through the route, however, you must walk along a busy road for a while, and you also have to cross a road once. After crossing the road we again came to a piece of our route that ran quite close to the road. On those roads, some people drive nicely slow, but cars also raced past at a higher speed. The fact that there is no shielding whatsoever between off-leash area and roads worries me, especially when the paths run so close to the road. Our dogs’ recall is great and therefore always came back promptly when I whistled, but I can imagine that this is not the case for everyone. And while playing, it can of course just happen that dogs end up on the roadway! Very dangerous, and in my opinion a huge downside to this area.
The poodle pool that we encountered halfway is quite small, our girls thought it was fun to run through it at the edges, but fortunately did not swim any further. It didn’t look very clean, I suspect it can get very dirty in the summer.

The forest itself is beautiful! Beautiful lanes with gorgeous trees and lots of nice greenery. It is also clean and that is of course great.