Sallandse Heuvelrug National Park

The Sallandse Heuvelrug rises between Hellendoorn and Holten in Overijssel, a moraine pushed up in the Saalian glaciation some 150,000 years ago and given national park status in 2004. Its thirty-five square kilometres take in the Holterberg, the Haarlerberg, the Noetselerberg and the Koningsbelten, topping out at 75 metres, modest anywhere else, a genuine climb here. The heath is not natural: medieval grazing and sod-cutting stripped the woodland and set the sand moving. That heath now carries the last Dutch population of black grouse, which is why parts of the park are kept quiet in spring.