Het Nationale Park De Hoge Veluwe — Attraction in Ede

A wonderful National park to explore. By foot using one of the many hiking trails, by car (part of the park can be explored by car), or from the back of a horse along the bridle paths. Of course, the disabled are also catered for: wheelchairs, wheelchair bikes, electric bicycles, tandems, comfortable easy-to-mount bikes and tricycles can be borrowed free of charge. And then there is what makes the Park so famous: the Park has 1,800 so-called White Bikes. The use of a White Bike is included in the entrance fee. As soon as a White Bike is parked, another visitor may use it. They cannot be reserved or locked. White Bikes are also available for children (without training wheels). All bicycles have a child's seat, in which you can also carry your backpack if you do not have children! The park has over 40 kilometres of cycle paths and two cycle routes. At various places in the park you can buy a map with all cycling and walking routes on it. De Hoge Veluwe National Park is the unique legacy of one of the most remarkable couples in Dutch history: Anton and Helene Kröller-Müller. Anton was a great lover of nature and hunting who founded his own country estate: the Hooge Veluwe. He was able to expand this estate continuously with new pieces of land. Red deer, wild boar and mouflons were released there. The most celebrated Dutch architect at the time, H.P. Berlage, was asked to design the St. Hubertus hunting lodge in Art Nouveau style. Berlage also designed the ponds, the gardens around the lodge, the Art Deco interior and even the cutlery! Helene Kröller-Müller also had a passion: collecting modern art. A major part of her enormous art collection can be viewed, for example in the Kröller-Müller museum, where you can admire the work of Vincent van Gogh, but also that of Claude Monet, Georges Seurat, Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondriaan. In the adjacent sculpture garden, the largest in Europe, there are more than 160 sculptures by iconic artists, from Auguste Rodin to Henry Moore, from Jean Dubuffet to Joep van Lieshout. From the sculpture garden, you can also climb up to the highest viewpoint in the park from where you can see the wide surroundings. Impressive sculptures and statues can additionally be found here and there in the park., just out of the blue in the middle of nature. There are the remains of the foundations of the Great Museum. Helene's dream was to establish a large museum so that everyone would have access to modern art. Unfortunately, the economic crisis of the 1920’s brought Anton's firm into very serious difficulties and in 1922 the construction had to be stopped definitively. Eventually, the couple had to hand over all their possessions to the Dutch state, on condition that a museum would still be built and that the park would become a National Park. And so it happened: in the park you will find the hunting lodge, the Kröller-Müller museum, the sculpture garden, as well as a large visitor centre with restaurant, playground, shop and the Museonder, the first underground museum in the world. For a small entrance fee accessible for everybody. The Museonder provides a surprising picture of everything that lives below the earth's surface and of what used to live there. The exhibition takes you deeper and deeper into the ground. Eventually you will even end up in the centre of the earth. Also great fun and educational for children! The National Park itself offers the very best in Veluwe landscapes: deciduous, coniferous and mixed forests, as well as heathland (wet and dry), grassy plains and shifting sands. These landscapes harbour an unprecedented diversity of plant and animal species, including many protected birds, insects and amphibians. It is a wonderful National Park in all seasons, one never gets...

Visited the park over a weekend with my family (that includes a puppy and toddler). Pre booked a Bakfiets as well as a a normal bike. Also bought a ticket to take the car inside the park.

Things to note

There are different parking spaces for car. The parking lots outside the park are cheaper and you can get the free white bikes to explore the park. But do note that these lots are around 3.5kms from the Center of the park (where the restaurants, museums etc are present)

There is parking lots inside the park (those are separate tickets from the normal parking tickets, make sure you select “bring auto in” ticket). This takes you direct to the heart of the park where you park next to the park pavilion. There is restaurants, toilets, a souvenir shop as well as bike rental place near the pavilion. If you have a pre booked bakfiets or bikes, this is where you park your car and get the bike from. In google maps, this is marked as “Parkeerplaats Bezoekerscentrum”. This is a good place to start exploration for less hardcore explorers as u start from the middle of the park and can explore a sub section of the natural reserve and be back.

You can explore the park by just driving around in your car, but admittedly that’s a lot less fun than being on bike.

There are picnic tables spread across the park or you can just get a picnic mat and get comfortable in an open space.

Despite being a weekend on a school vacation and a sunny day the park wasn’t that crowded except around the pavilion area.

There was an abundance of the free white bikes with child seats and you most probably need not pre book normal bikes.

Make sure to pack lots of water as well as some snacks. You will need those after all those cycling and there aren’t any places to get them in park (except around...

The Hoge Veluwe National Park in Arnhem offers different landscapes which are home to a wide diversity of plant and animal species.

The Park is a cultural heritage formed early in the twentieth century by the married couple Anton and Helene Kröller-Müller. Anton was a successful businessman. He was passionate about hunting and therefore, as from 1909, purchased De Hoge Veluwe hunting ground, in phases. Helene was an enthusiastic art collector. Together Anton and Helene pursued an ideal: uniting nature and art in the interests of the common good.

In the period 1909-1923, the foundations for the current Park were laid. The Park was fenced off and animals brought in (mouflons, red deer and wild boar). The family's residence, Jachthuis Sint Hubertus was built and visual works of art purchased. This period also saw the start of the construction of a museum for the art collection.

From the rare Fritillary to the imposing Red Deer, from the Alcon Blue to the Dwarf Viper's-grass; they all live in the Park. The Park is also home to dozens of Red List species, such as the Wheatear, the Wryneck, the Moor Frog and the Grass Snake.

The park has several types of heathland, ranging from dry to wet. There was a time that sand drifts and moors made up 70% of the park's natural landscape. These days, 65% of the park is forested. It is home to a wide variety of trees, the best known being birch, beech, oak, and pine. Pines are the most common type of tree in the park. Ferns and mosses also thrive in the park and can be found in abundance in our forests. Toadstools can be found year-round in the park, with autumn being the...