The Inventory Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) in the Netherlands contains ICH of which the communities, groups or individuals involved have written a safeguarding plan. Those plans are reviewed by an independent review committee. Every three years an evaluation of the safeguarding takes place.

Description

There are seven ceremonial shooting clubs in Didam, which celebrate their shooters’ feast at the same time. For this occasion around 45 triumphal arches are built. The Stichting Bevordering Toerisme Didam (The Foundation for the Promotion of Tourism Didam) asks the arch builders of the previous years whether they want to erect a triumphal arch again beforehand and annually organises a cycling tour of about 18 to 21 miles along the arches.

The builders are generally linked to one of the shooting clubs. Building an arch is non-committal and there is no pressure or obligation from the shooting clubs to place an arch. Individual arch builders, who wish to incidentally build an arch, can join as well. Building the arches is not a competition and it all happens in the atmosphere of fraternisation that characterises the shooters’ festival.

Location and theme are determined, the greens are collected and the take-down is arranged. Paper roses are hung in the arches for decoration. Furthermore the builders  plan what will happen when the shooting club passes underneath the arch, besides playing the national anthem: will there be flag throwing in honour of the arch builders, will there be an obstacle (tree trunk) that must be cut through before the shooting club can go on, must the shooting club be treated?

Participants in the cycling tour can buy a route description. The route is cycled from Sunday up to and including the Tuesday of the shooters’ feast, by more than 2000 participants. Start and finish of the cycling tour are at the former town hall of Didam where, on the square, a flag homage is brought to the Municipality in the course of Sunday afternoon. A shooters march follows. One can cycle the tour if one wishes; there are no fixed moments of departure or arrival.

Community

The practitioners of the tradition are generally members of the seven shooting clubs in Didam, mostly with family, and neighbourhood associations and/or groups of friends.

The number of arch builders varies considerably per arch, from around 30 up to a hundred persons and the ages can be differ much as well.

Each year around 2000 participants cycle the arch tour, most of whom from the Liemers region, the Achterhoek and Brabant.

The Shooters’ Arch Tour is organised by the Stichting Bevordering Toerisme Didam and the Oudheidkundige Vereniging Didam provides information on historical trivia along the cycling route.

 

History

Shooters’ arches, or triumphal arches have been added to the shooters’ festivals in Didam since about one hundred years, the origin of which lies in the medieval guilds. In 1811 arches were built in De Liemers, in the vicinity of Didam, in honour of the visit by Napoleon. These triumphal arches were built by the local population, among whom many shooters. This was the basis for building triumphal arches for the shooters’ king.

Nowadays the arches are erected by clubs of friends, neighbourhood or street associations, et cetera. The tree greens used are getting more and more scarce and cannot be collected with wagons full from the Montferland woods anymore. They are now often fetched/bought at tree nurseries and presently some arches have been covered with artificial grass.

After informal cycling tours had been taken place along the many arches over the years, this was formalised for the first time in 1983, initially  partly at the instigation of the Didam Municipality. In the course of the years the organisation of the Shooters’ Arch Tour Didam has gradually moved out of the town hall and the cycling tour has since been organised by the Stichting Bevordering Toerisme Didam.

For some years the participating cyclists have been made aware of local particularities in the route description, to which the Oudheidkundige Vereniging Didam pays an interesting contribution, from a historic point of view.

Contact

Stichting Bevordering Toerisme Didam
Lavandelstraat 12
6942 XP
Didam
Gelderland
Website