Colorful Staphorst and surrounding areas

On the front wall of the church tower with the tent roof there is a copper plate, a reminder of the flood of 1825. The groove indicates the height to which the sea water has reached.

Traditional Staphorst
Staphorst, the municipality with its many faces, appeals to the imagination. The long ribbon of development with its colorful farms, traditional costumes and many traditions and customs makes Staphorst a unique municipality. A visit to the Staphorst Museum is surprising and very worthwhile.

Sometimes you have to get off the bike to properly admire the beautiful farms. The hard blue and green color are typical of Staphorst. The blue color is said to ward off evil, green represents new life and white represents purity.

You often see a cast iron ornament above the front door. This is a tree of life. It is also often painted in beautiful colors. The tree of life appears in the Bible. God planted the tree in the garden of Eden. The fruits give eternal life.

You may have already noticed the beautifully colored bucket racks with old milk cans on them. At some farms you will also see a wooden shelving unit with crockery. Children used to place shards or broken crockery here.

The traditional costume is still worn by several hundred women. The chance that you will encounter someone in pregnancy is therefore high. The costume consists of a black or blue skirt with an apron and breast skirt with a collar. The skirt has strips of checked or floral fabric. The kraplap is decorated with dot work.

A checked cloth is worn over the kraplap. A hat with dot work is worn on the head. If the dot work is done in white, blue and black, someone is in mourning. On Sundays people wear earrings and a lace tuft hat.

The traditional dot work is on the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage and has also made its way onto the Paris catwalk. Belgian couturier Walter van Beirendonck used fabrics with dot work, made in Staphorst, for his 2016 collection.

Nowadays Staphorst dot work can also be seen on many utensils such as telephone covers, bicycle bells and postcards.

Museum Staphorst
The museum is divided into a number of rooms that are decorated in a typical Staphorst manner. It has a considerable collection of traditional costumes, including beautiful dotted hats and silver earrings.

Mill De Leijen
The flour mill'De Leijen\\\' used to stand so free in the landscape that a scaffolding was not necessary to raise the sails a little higher before the wind. And that is why the blades here rotate at their lowest point just above the ground and why farm boys sometimes jump on them to take a spin.

A lot of buckwheat was ground in the Staphorster mill. This flour was mainly used to fry pancakes in bacon fat. In the mill, the wooden gears are lubricated with bacon grease. A baking smell is then created in the mill if it turns too fast, so the miller knows that he must stop the blades.

The Black Fens
Despite the vastness of the peat areas in the municipality of Staphorst, no major peat extraction has occurred anywhere around IJhorst. However, one could earn a good living by keeping cattle on the rich meadows along the Reest. People did extract peat, but only for their own use.

The peat was extracted in so-called peat pits, which filled with water after the peat had disappeared. In this way, not only the inky black fen 'Black Fens' was created, but also the Ganzeplas and a number of other small lakes in this unique area. In summer on the waterfront, the meadow damselfly.

The Four Mountains
In the past, when this area was still referred to as 'wasteland', the hilly, swampy terrain was clearly recognizable by four eye-catching hills. so-called'Horsten\\\' which means'height\\\'. At those heights you still see snow-white drifting sand 

Staphorster Forest
In the 1930s, almost all previously undeveloped wasteland in the municipality of Staphorst was systematically cultivated in the context of job creation. Forests were planted on land that was not or hardly suitable because of its poor quality...

... this is how an almost contiguous forest area developed. Boswachterij Staphorst became a model forestry whose main purpose was wood production.
In the middle of the Black Pines there is a beautiful swimming pond surrounded by a sandy beach. The kiosk is open at weekends and during holidays where you can buy an ice cream, drink or tasty fries. Kiosk is located at the northern parking lot.

Near the swimming pond, an 'experience path' has been constructed in the forest by Staatsbosbeheer. This path is designed as a not too long walk for (parents with) children. Start is at the southern parking lot.

Every few hundred meters there is something for the children to experience, such as a bamboo carillon, a cable car, a section with different ground cover, a sundial tree and a periscope with which you can see both very low to the ground and higher. can be seen in the sky.

Museum Palthehof
The history of Nieuwleusen is shown in the Palthehof museum. It owes its name to the Palthe family who had property here. Museum Palthehof is located in the beautiful Palthebos. The collection includes the inventories of various craft businesses, tools and clothing.

Ruitenveen peat area
Until 1635, the vast area of northern Overijssel was still desolate and almost without settlements. The first inhabitants took up the peat bogs and the exploitation of the swamps. The area is still characterized by its groves, hedgerows, windbreaks and avenues.

Route offered by: Landschap Overijssel