Jacob van Lennep route, Part 13 (Hoogezand - Assen)

About Groningen
On Saturday, June 28, Van Lennep and Van Hogendorp will leave the province of Groningen. The final verdict? Despite the threats in the Groningen hostel, Van Lennep does not want to blame the students. After all, they are isolated from good examples. Moreover, they live in a province where life revolves around commerce and agriculture, so they lack the opportunity"(...) to practice fine arts and sciences\\\". Van Lennep is less lenient about the gentlemen farmers. They have lived beyond their means. Now that grain prices have fallen, they should know their real place.

Drentsche Aa
Via an unnecessary detour, the hikers end up in Zuidlaren: a "delightful place". They walk further, over heath and drifting sand. After a while the landscape changes into ash trees where plenty of wheat grows. In fact, they walk through what we now call the Drentsche Aa National Landscape. Although we find this well-preserved cultural landscape very special, Van Lennep does not say a word about it: it was normal in his time.

Asserbos
The travelers pass through Loon, a hamlet where Van Hogendorp visited four years earlier. "So he pretended he knew the road well, so we wandered around the heath for half an hour longer than necessary," says Van Lennep. You hear him sigh... Yet the young men are not faint. Although they already have quite a few kilometers in their legs that day, around six o'clock in the evening they take a detour along the long avenues through the Asserbos. Tormented by mosquitoes, they return after two hours. Then they write letters for three hours and go to bed at eleven o'clock.

Floor sources
-Jakob van Lennep," The summer of 1823": part 1, ch. 9; part 2, ch. 1.
-Geert Mak, The summer of 1823 as a television series : episode 4.
-Maya Schepers, The summer of 1823 as a radio series : episode 4.