Soesterduinen

The Soesterduinen are open drift sand on the Utrechtse Heuvelrug, the ice-pushed ridge running north from the Rhine, and they are inland - about twenty kilometres from the North Sea, with nothing coastal about them. The sand was set moving in the same way as elsewhere on the Dutch sand grounds: heath grazed and stripped for fertiliser until the cover failed, wind doing the rest, mainly from the late Middle Ages. Most of the resulting drift sand was planted with pine in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to stop it; this patch was kept open. It covers around a hundred and twenty hectares of bare sand with heath, birch and pine around it and grazing to hold back the scrub. Sand lizard, ant-lion and specialised beetles live here. The Soesterberg air base, closed in 2008, is beside it and has become a nature area of its own with the runway left in place.

History

The Utrecht Hill Ridge is a moraine pushed up in the Saale glaciation, and in the Weichselian ice age thick layers of sand were blown onto its north-east side. In the Middle Ages logging and heavy grazing, above all by sheep, stripped the forest, and in the Late Middle Ages drifting sands formed where grazing was most intense; farmers nearby, as at De Birkt between Amersfoort and Soest, built wooden walls to keep the sand off their fields (Wikipedia, Soester Dunes).

What you'll find

• Inland drifting sand - twenty kilometres from the coast, on the Utrecht ridge.
• About 120 hectares open - kept clear where most drift sand was planted over.
• Specialist sand species - sand lizard, ant-lion and open-ground beetles.
• A former air base beside it - Soesterberg, closed in 2008, runway left in place.

When to go

April to October. Half a day.

Things to know

Sand walking is hard and there is no shade - avoid the middle of hot days. Stay on marked routes; the surface is fragile. Busy at weekends given how close it is to the Randstad.

Nearby

Soesterberg air base and the national military museum are next door.

Key facts