Walking from Westerbork to Orvelte

Old-fashioned green villages
This walk runs from Westerbork to Orvelte. Westerbork is a green village that is best known for the former Westerbork concentration camp. However, this camp is located a long way outside Westerbork, close to Hooghalen. Westerbork is a good example of a typical Drenthe village with a village green where cows and sheep used to be gathered in the morning and evening. Furthermore, green villages have an es, a communal field that is slightly higher than the village.

Hotel Restaurant Ruyghe Venne
Orvelte is also a green village and the village is also a true open-air museum. The village is almost a thousand years old and many old buildings have been preserved. Look around you and imagine yourself in Orvelte in times long past. In some buildings in the village, old crafts such as glass blowing, iron forging and wood sawing are demonstrated. The start and end point of this route is at Hotel Restaurant Ruyghe Venne. Here you can have a bite to eat, a drink or spend the night. Route 381654 also has this hotel as a starting point.

The Drenthe of the past
In the area around Orvelte and Westerbork you can clearly see what Drenthe looked like around 1900. The villages have exactly the same structure as in the past and you will find many old thatched farms here. The car-free village of Orvelte in particular looks almost exactly as it used to and the arable land in the vicinity of the villages has also remained unchanged for centuries. You can imagine how people used to drive around here with horse and cart.