The Drenthe Backs

The varied route is plotted in the Drenthe landscape. You drive along and over the Drenthe heath, through forests, over sandy soils, along stream valleys and over peatlands.

Drenthe consists mainly of sandy soils. We also cross the Hondsrug before we drive over the Drenthe peatlands. In the wide valley east of the Hondsrug, a thick package of raised peat has arisen over the course of the last thousands of years. From the Middle Ages, this peat was highly valued as a fuel (peat) and the raised bog was excavated and sold.

The Hondsrug is an elongated ridge in Drenthe and Groningen that extends from Emmen to the city of Groningen. It is part of a larger set of sand ridges and stream valleys in Drenthe and Groningen that is called the Hondsrug system. The Hondsrug, together with part of the surrounding area, forms the only geopark in the Netherlands.

The Hondsrug is the most prominent back in a complex of several parallel, elongated ridges. The other, lower, ridges are: the Rug van Tynaarlo, the Rolderrug, the Rug van Zeijen, the Rug van Noordhorn and the Rug van Norg. Today, the Hondsrug and the parallel ridges are considered so-called megaflutes. These straight subglacial ridges were formed under the influence of the Hondsrug-Hümmling current in the last phase of the penultimate ice age: the Late Saalien (approx. 150,000 to 130,000 BP). The ridges consist of boulder clay carried by the land ice, but also of older deposits from the Elsterian.

The route starts and ends at the water at Paviljoen Nijstad. The route is easily accessible from A28, exit 25 Zuidwolde.