Although this boulder has an "official" number D48 Stone of Noordbarge it is not a Hunebed, but a glacial erratic. When it turned out that the stone is not a capstone of a Hunebed, number D48 was removed from the catalog list.
But as the access is very easy and the boulder is De Dik(ste) Stien van Drenthe (thickest stone of Drenthe) I stopped and had a quick look at it.
I finally got around to visiting this huge erratic boulder after failing miserably, on an earlier trip, to photograph it from the window of a moving bus.
I had been visiting Emmen's zoo, Wildlands, newly relocated to a spacious park on the western boundary of the town. At the end of the visit, I set out on foot for the Steen van Noordbarge, a pleasant 20-minute walk.
The stone is easily located as it lies on Emmerweg, just a few metres east of the sign indicating the western boundary of Emmen/Noordbarge. It lies in a shallow grassy hollow, and measures 4.15 × 3.40 metres. Efforts had clearly been made in antiquity to shatter the stone for building purposes, as there is evidence of seven boreholes in it.
D48 Noordbargerbos (the Stone of Noordbarge), was at one time thought to be a capstone belonging to a buried hunebed and was included by archaeologist A E van Giffen in his original list of hunebedden. However, it later turned out that it was simply a single—though exceptionally large—erratic boulder.
This stone, located in the Noordbargerbos to the southwest of Emmen, is the largest megalith of the Netherlands. The Stone sits on the roadside verge to the north of Ermerweg, a little after its intersection with Nieuwe Amsterdamsestraat, about 300 metres west of the Noordbarge bus halt. Bus line 21 from Emmen to Assen will take you there.
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