Nederland - Glimmen, Appelbergen

Nature area Appelbergen is a former military training area where troops assembled for field exercises. It is located east of the village of Glimmen on the Hondsrug. This complex of several ridges was formed by the land ice at the end of the Saale glaciation (370.000 to 130.000 years ago).

All over Appelbergen one can find traces of the last ice age (the Weichselian glaciation, 115.000 years to 10.000 years ago). For instance pingos, or hills of ice, which rose up and then collapsed when the ice melted. Nowadays they show up like round pools.

In the Appelbergen is the Grote Veen (main image and PiPs 1 and 2) a large peat bog with a round shape. Most probably it is one of the pingos. In World War II the Germans killed 34 people and buried them secretly here; 19 were found, but the other 15 have never been recovered. A part of the Grote Veen has been dug out in order to find these war victims. Despite the fact that nothing was found, a sober monument has been erected in 2004 in memory of them (PiP3).