Landgoed de Barendonk

The fortified town of Grave (10 minutes) makes for an interesting half-day trip. The Museum there charts the story of its two sieges while over at the Thompson bridge you can learn how a more recent war was fought and won by a quick thinking US army lieutenant. Mook (15 minutes) is a pretty town on the Maas river, so tranquil it's hard to believe the quantity of battles that raged on the nearby Mookerheide. Now a fab and forested nature reserve laced with hiking and biking trails, it bears the scars of 17th-century skirmishes and the craters from World War Two shelling. It's 20 minutes' drive to Nijmegen, oldest city in the Netherlands and first recorded by the Romans who built a fort nearby. The town bears the traces of its long history, not least the battering it took in 1944 from the US airforce, who thought they were bombing the close-by German town of Kleve. It's home to an excellent art museum, a Velorama devoted to bicycle history and the very fine Valkhof Park containing Roman ruins and riverside picnic spots. Kleve (35 minutes) is just over the border in Germany, justly loved for its hilltop castle and modern art museum.