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Nationaal Park Drentsche Aa

Nature

Hertenkamp

350 m

Photo: Rolde.nl - 2024

Animal paddock on the Bosrand in Rolde with deer, swans, rabbits and all kinds of poultry. A visit combines well with a walk in the woods next to it.

The Hertenkamp (deer park) is home to deer, swans and rabbits, and to poultry such as chickens, geese, ducks, peacocks and turkeys. In spring ducklings and goslings arrive, in summer the fawns are born, and there are chicks running around all year.

The animals are looked after by volunteers: on weekdays by the volunteers of the care organisation De Trans, at weekends by people from the area. They feed the animals and also look after the Hertenkamp itself.

Dogs must be kept on a lead. You may feed the animals bread, but in moderation: they already get enough to eat.

Nature

Nationaal Park Drentsche Aa

5.9 km from de Jacobuskerk in Rolde

Three deer among the trees Photo: aB - 2024

The national park around Rolde: the valley of the Drentsche Aa, with winding streams, old farming villages, heath and woods. From Rolde you can walk or cycle straight into it.

Nationaal Park Drentsche Aa lies all around Rolde. The area used to have the official name Nationaal beek- en esdorpenlandschap Drentsche Aa, and the park calls itself the best-preserved landscape of streams and es villages in Western Europe. You will find stream valleys, es villages, vast heaths and woods.

The stream

The Drentsche Aa is one of the few stream systems in the Netherlands that people have hardly touched. Over thousands of years the stream has found its own winding course through the landscape, which makes its valley very varied. The animals living along its banks include the beaver, the otter, the kingfisher and the banded demoiselle.

An old landscape

People have lived here for at least 5,000 years. You can see it in the dolmens, the burial mounds and the celtic fields, prehistoric farmland. Around the streams lie es villages such as Rolde, Zuidlaren, Taarlo, Anloo and Amen. An es village (esdorp) is built around a brink, a village green, with the shared arable field, the es, next to it. In them you find Saxon farmhouses, medieval churches and village greens.

Protection

The park is a Natura 2000 site and a national landscape. It has a 'broader objective': besides nature and landscape, it is also concerned with farming and the quality of life in the villages.

On the map on this page, the park is marked at the Gasterse Duinen car park, in the middle of the area. Walking and cycling routes, the events calendar and information about the visitor centre are on drentscheaa.nl.

Nature

Rolde sand drift

950 m

An open stretch of sand in the Boerdennen woods, where the people of Rolde used to hold celebrations and children played. The sand drift has been under restoration since 2016.

Generations of Rolde people know the sand drift from village festivities, sports competitions and school trips. Children from Groningen also came to Rolde by train in their droves to play in the sand and buy a treat at the kiosk run by Plest. In the 1960s there was even autocross racing here.

For centuries the wind had free rein over Drenthe's many sandy soils. Rolde was no exception: even the Brink, the village green, lay under the sand. That caused trouble for the village and its farmers. The Boermarke, the farmers' association that owned this common land, therefore appointed sand wardens to limit the effects of the drifting sand. Later, through tree planting and more intensive farming, the sand became covered with fertile soil and nature could take its course.