Experience walk | Sint-Pietersberg

Go and explore the Fort first before we start the walk. You can walk around in the Fort's dry moat and count all the embrasures. There are a lot of them! Fort Sint-Pietersberg was built around 1701-1702 by order of Baron Daniël Wolff von Dopff. It was built in the shape of a pentagon to defend the southern ramparts of Maastricht. Did you know that up to 450 soldiers could work in the Fort? This happened only once in history, when it came under fire from the Lauberg hill. By the way, the Fort was never conquered. Tsar Peter the Great visited the Fort when he was passing through in 1717. High visit! You too can visit the inside of the Fort with a guide from Maastricht Underground.

Leave the Kiekoet on the right and continue the path to the T-junction. At the T-junction, turn right. You are now walking towards the platform at the ENCI quarry and the stairs leading into the quarry. On the platform you look out over the ENCI quarry. The platform symbolises a road that disappeared due to marl mining. Take a good look around at what you see here.

Do you have the time and energy to descend a bit of the stairs? Here you will enter part of the marl caves. Here you can clearly see how the marl used to be carved, first by the block breakers and then by ENCI. Do you know what ENCI stands for? It is the First Dutch Cement Industry. Once at the bottom of the stairs, you can see fossils in the marl wall. Wiggle your hand through the marl on the ground. Did you know that your hands go through millions of fossils here?

Mosasaurs have been found in this quarry! This dinosaur is named after the river Maas that flows through Maastricht. Mosa is the Latin word for Maas and Saurus is the Latin word for lizard-like, so Maas lizard. The Mosasaurs lived some 82 million years ago and were large predators in the sea that was here then. Shark teeth have also been found in the quarry! Five teeth were found from an extinct shark that could grow up to 5 metres long! He lived at the time when there was a subtropical inland sea here, right where you are standing now! How extraordinary is that? At the Natural History Museum in Maastricht, you can learn all about the finds of these prehistoric animals.

Just climb back up, and we will continue exploring. Follow the road and immediately take the first right at the big boulders (maybe you can climb up and jump off for a while, be careful though!). We are heading towards Hoeve Lichtenberg.

You are now walking on a part of the mountain where there are many badger setts. Just like man who dug all kinds of corridors in the mountain, the badger does the same. The badger makes all kinds of rooms in the corridors and lives in the passages underground. Could humans do the same? Maybe we will come across another cave dwelling. Did you know that the badger eats up to 200 (!) earthworms in one evening and can see very poorly, but smell super well? It smells about 700 times better than a human! A badger sett can be inhabited for more than 100 years and has lots of different rooms for all the badgers living in the sett.

Ready to move on? Come! At the birdhouse, don't go down the steps, but continue your way to the left, down a small hill. At the first opportunity, turn left into the field. On your right you will see allotments and if you look straight ahead, you may already be able to see a marl wall. The road curves to the right behind the allotments. One of the allotments sometimes features the forgotten vegetable cardoon. Cardoon was once an exclusive vegetable eaten at Christmas by the Maastricht chic. You can recognise the plant by its size; it can grow up to 80-150 cm tall and has woolly, hairy hairs with long yellow thorns. So don't touch it! Cardoon stems are bleached in the caves.

We move on, there is still plenty to see! Leaving the cave entrance to your left, climb up the small hill and go through the swing gate into the meadow. You now enter a beautiful meadow where you can have a nice run or rest on a bench. Which river do you see in the distance? Continue straight on through the meadow and leave the meadow again through a swing gate. Follow the path straight ahead. On your right you will see beautiful cows and maybe a pig, if you are lucky. At the fork, turn left, another climb up. Come on! You can do it, just one more climb. The road bends to the right. Just walk straight ahead until you reach the entrance to Caves North. If you dare to visit Caves North, you can do so with a Maastricht Underground guide. With the guide, you'll explore some of the 8,000 or so tunnels that lie beneath St Peter's Mountain. You will discover beautiful drawings, can saw like a block breaker in a marl block and listen to stories about the Mosasaurus. Maybe you will also succeed in making fire with a flint and the guide will show you the Vault. The Night Watch was kept in the Vault during the Second World War.

Did you know that Caves North and Caves Zonneberg were connected? You could walk in here and come out again at Caves Zonneberg, where you were a moment ago. Unfortunately, this is no longer possible now, as ENCI has excavated the marl to make cement. At the viewing platform, you could see that a huge hole has been dug. Fort Sint Pieter is still connected to the Caves North by a 38-metre spiral staircase.

Now walk back a bit until you reach the junction again. Walk up the paved road here and keep to the right. If you walk straight ahead, you will enter the dog-walking area. Both routes are possible; you can choose here. In front of you, you can see Fort Sint Pieter, where you started and where this experience walk ends.

One last fact. Did you know that the lighting here, at St Peter's Eye (the car park), is bat-friendly lighting? Bats are nocturnal animals; they function best in a dark environment and are very sensitive to light disturbance. That is why this lighting is red in colour in the evenings and at night.

Curious about underground Maastricht? Then be sure to join a guide from Maastricht Underground! Bring a torch, good shoes, a jacket, and off you go on an adventure!

This route is inspired by Natuurmonumenten's Sint-Pietersberg hiking trail.