Nature house in Meppen

At this nature house it is dead quiet at night. In the morning the birds whistle and sometimes you see deer walking past the window. It really is a nature house in the middle of the forest near Meppen, a village with 350 inhabitants halfway between Hoogeveen and Emmen. The house is made entirely of wood, was built in 1961 and is still more or less in its original state. It is located in a piece of forest where the municipality once issued plots to put up cottages. There are no shared facilities; the cottage has a quarter acre of forest to itself. You can book up to a week in advance, and in 2024 we put a completely new roof on it, and renewed all the electricity. In the process, we kept the existing atmosphere intact.

The nature house is located on the edge of nature reserve De Palms, one of the most beautiful remaining terrains in Drenthe with heather and (especially) lots of junipers. De Palms is part of the Mepperdennen. In recent years more and more nature is coming to the area (and it was already not little). The stream valleys of the Geeserstroom, Aalderstroom and Westerstroom were once very spoiled by land consolidation and canalization, but have been brought back to a much more natural state. The whole area between Meppen, Zweeloo, Oosterhesselen and Gees has become one large nature reserve with here and there a piece of farmland or a village in between. The villages are quiet Saxon villages full of farms, between rolling ash trees and lower lying stream valleys. Meppen itself is also such a village, which does have a nice restaurant (De Tramhalte) and a pizzeria (Trivio del Villaggio). For bakery and supermarket you have to go to Aalden, one kilometer away. Nice bike ride.