After the war the network of hiking paths in the Netherlands was in a very bad condition. The population had other priorities than hiking. In 1974, local Naturefriends in the north of the Netherlands started to plan a multi-day round walk.

About 10 years later, the Naturefriends Toos Goorhuis-Tjalsma and Bertje Jens took the initiative to extend this path to a long-distance trail with over 498 km and named it Pieterpad, as it leads from Pieterburen in the north to St. Pietersberg in the south. There, the Pieterpad encounters the European long-distance path E2 from Scotland to the Mediterranean coast near Nice.

The Pieterpad with its 26 stages contributed to making hiking popular again in the Netherlands and is still the most popular long-distance hiking trail in the country.

By now, in the Netherlands there is a network of long-distance hiking trails and round walks which also connects the Naturefriends Houses and has a total length of 11,500 km, half of which are managed by the Naturefriends.