National Park Drentsche Aa and Hondsrug

The Landscape

The National Park Drentsche Aa is the best-preserved traditional cultural landscape in Western Europe. It covers a large area characterized by a network of meandering streams, known as the Drentsche Aa river and its tributaries flowing through a mosaic of fields, forests, heathlands, and small historic villages. The winding Drentsche Aa still largely follows its original course, and because there was little land consolidation, the traditional cultural landscape has remained almost intact. Everywhere you’ll find traces of early settlement: prehistoric dolmens and burial mounds, Saxon farms nestled under ancient oaks, villages with village greens and rustic country lanes, small-scale elevated fields bordered by hedgerows, and flower-rich hay meadows along the river valley.

The Hondsrug is a long, winding sand ridge in the northern Netherlands, formed by ice and meltwater during the Ice Ages. As a dry route through a marshy landscape, it was the ideal place for settlement and travel for thousands of years. Here, Neanderthals hunted mammoths, megalithic builders erected giant burial monuments, and the first farmers established their villages. The landscape still bears their traces: from impressive dolmens and quiet burial mounds to mysterious sacrificial sites and ancient cart tracks on the heath.