The Rodaam Route is a four-kilometer forest walk through the North Holland Dune Reserve near Castricum. The route leads through centuries-old oak forests and impressive avenues and heads west into open dunes, with the Rodaam Forest Reserve as a special part of the walk.
From coppice to thin-keel forest
The dune area near Castricum is characterized by extensive oak forests that were originally planted for coppice exploitation. The trees were felled every twenty to thirty years to harvest the bark, which contains a lot of tannic acid and was sold to tanneries. The remaining branch and trunk wood went mainly to bakers as fuel for their ovens. After the advent of synthetic tannic acid, the bark was no longer needed, and the coppice grew into multi-stemmed stools. Later, these stools were grafted onto a single trunk, creating a so-called 'spaartelgenbos' (savings-stem forest).
Rodaam Forest Reserve
A large part of the walk runs through Rodaam, a forest reserve of approximately ninety hectares where no management or work has taken place for years. This makes it a rare example of an undisturbed dune oak forest. Giant crown oaks grow on old sand ridges, recognizable by their whimsical shapes and heavy, low-hanging branches. Some of these trees are already more than one hundred and fifty years old. A wide variety of organisms live around the oak forest, including special mushrooms such as the stag's toadstool and the copper-green cup fungus.
Trees, birds and seasons
The oak forests along the route vary greatly in character: from beautiful old gnarled trunks to vertical, much younger plantations. Many honeysuckle and young maples grow in the undergrowth. Robins and wrens can regularly be heard here. The route is described as one of the most beautiful forest walks in the North Holland Dune Reserve, especially in winter.
