Hoge Veluwe: six days solo across the most beautiful forest in the Netherlands

Veluwe place Veluwe, Netherlands calendar_today May 2023 schedule 6 days straighten 101 km

Ray Kootstra

Founder of HikeLoad · long-distance hiker

Practical notes from the trail

Route: My own route, Zwolle to Ede, straight across the Veluwe — about 101 km over six days (15 / 21 / 18 / 20 / 18 / 9 km).
Difficulty: Not hard: very walkable paths and little elevation. The only tough bit is that some days run a touch long.
Sleeping: Mostly wild-ish camping with a Naturehike Star River 2 tent, plus one hotel night at Hotel 't Speulderbos in Garderen.
De Hoge Veluwe park: Buy your entry ticket in advance so you can walk straight through. Lovely and quiet in places, but the cycle-path areas feel commercial and busy.
Food: I carried food for all six days; a few villages along the way are handy for picking up treats.
When I went: May 2023 — fresh green heath and good walking weather.

I always walk alone. That's the whole point for me — no one else to take into account, my own plan, my own pace, my own quiet. So in May 2023 I set my own route straight across the Veluwe: six days on foot from Zwolle to Ede, around 101 kilometres, with my tent on my back.

I'd been wanting to do this stretch for a while. For me the Veluwe is simply the most beautiful forest area I've seen anywhere in the Netherlands — and one of the biggest. That's reason enough.

The moment it all opened up

There's one thing that this landscape does better than anywhere else I know. You walk along inside the forest for a while, and then the trees fall away and you step out onto an enormous plain of sand and heath. The views, the gentle rolling of the land — it's just beautiful to stand in. Taking that whole landscape in gives you such a good feeling. The photo at the top of this diary is exactly that moment. You can see it for yourself there.

It felt good. Exactly right.

Easy walking, one honest gripe

Physically this wasn't a hard trip. The distances were sometimes just a touch longer than I'd have liked, but the paths are very walkable and there's not much height to deal with. I could settle into it and enjoy.

My one real gripe is the paid part — the actual De Hoge Veluwe National Park. I didn't mind paying to get in, and I'd bought my ticket in advance so I could just walk straight through. But inside that paid area it felt very commercial to me: broad, neatly laid-out cycle paths, a lot of day-trippers. That's not what I come for.

One deer, completely unaware

And yet the best wildlife moment of the whole trip happened right there, in that paid section. I only saw one deer the entire week — but in that spot it was very quiet, and he hadn't noticed me coming. I got to stand and watch him for a while, calmly, before he knew I was there. That was something special.

How I slept and ate

Most nights I camped, with my own Naturehike Star River 2 tent. Halfway through I treated myself to a proper hotel room at Hotel 't Speulderbos in Garderen — a bit of luxury in the middle of it all. I carried food for every day, which made things easy, and I passed through a few villages where I could pick up some treats along the way.

Arriving in Ede

Reaching Ede after six days felt good. Precisely right. It was a lovely trip — not too heavy, just thoroughly enjoyed from start to finish.

Three years on, this is still my answer for anyone who wants a multi-day hike in the Netherlands through really beautiful, forest-rich country: the Veluwe is still the place to be for me. I keep coming back for a few-day trips with the tent. And if you ask me where the very best of it is, I'll point you to the Veluwezoom, on the east and south side. That, for me, is the most beautiful of all.