Born and grown up in a little village Nijeveen, I was living for 17 years in the south – west part of the province of Drenthe. For study and work I took of to other parts of the country. Until the winter of 2011. I came back and settled again in Drenthe directly from the big city of Rotterdam. Drenthe, the first place of civilization in the pre-historic Netherlands. Now a days people think different about that.

Ever since the first spring of 2012 I explored the beautiful countryside of Drenthe. It’s not about the monumental stone heritage I’m hiking, it’s about experiencing the sense of the place, to understand what humankind wrote into the surface of land.
Also in this spring I saw for the first time the wheeltracks of medieval cars. To be honest I read about them during a walk through the Strubben Kniphorstbosch near Schipborg. At first I did not see them at all! This wheeltrack is called a medieval highway. From that moment off I was projecting a bunch of cars with horses on the silent heath. Where did the medieval traffic go, crossing this abandoned landscape? The existence of this tracks is remarkable, how could they still be there? How could I recognize them in the landscape it self? Was I able to read the lines in landscape? In the end this kind of questions brought me into the study Landscape History.

Video: Flock of Balloo crossing medieval car-tracks.