A frequent change in scenery: This is the key ingredient of a successful spazierwanderweg trail – according to the of the German Hiking Institute, which, after all, invented the whole concept of German “easy hiking”.
The Haywain of the Teutoburg Forest
Seen like that, a walk alongside a small country creek – and a particularly short one at that: 3.5 km do not provide a bagful of opportunities for dramatic twists and turns – does not immediately suggest itself as the most promising item on the Teutoschleifchen menu of easy hiking trails in the Teutoburg Forest.
But first impressions, as we all know, can deceive, and the Ladbergener Pättkes tour is, while short, also lively – and ready to spring a few surprises.
Surprise number one: Ladbergen itself, the village where the tour begins. Ladbergen is small even by village standards but the little there is is highly picturesque.
Which is partly due to the fact that Ladbergen is the opposite of a “new town”, built only to serve neighbouring, larger cities: its history reaches back into the 10th century.
Ladbergen’s claim to fame, however, is of a much more recent vintage: of all municipalities in Germany – cities, towns, villages – it was the most heavily bombarded in WWII, calculated as the ratio between the size of a municipal surface area and the number bombs that rained down on it.
This is certainly something you would never suspect when you see all the pretty timber-framed houses along the high street.
This walk on the Haywain of the Teutoburg Forest “officially” starts at the town church (to take visitors on a short tour of the village centre, presumably), but you can also turn right into the path behind the old mill on the Mühlenbach, the “mill creek” that you will cross on your way from the bus stop (buses from Münster – R51 – and Osnabrück – X15 – come here once an hour).
Almost immediately, you will be greeted by subtropical lushness …
… before the landscape, just as suddenly, opens up. This is surprise no. 2: the sheer beauty of this western European countryside from central casting, more Haywain than Turner.
This is not the sublime terror of the Alps or the turbulent open sea, but a calm and almost otherworldly idyll.
But there is more: along the way, you will come across handsome farm houses …
… a stretch of forest …
… and even a second body of water, a pond with a dramatically contorted old tree trunk, introducing a note of romantic excitement after the idyllic calm of the Mühlenbach.
There is only one drawback: the walk is seriously short, with a total walking time of a little more than an hour.
From the map, you will know that the route is shaped like a long oval, so you know that when you leave the creek to take a sharp right turn to walk across a wide meadow …
… that another 90-degree right turn will soon follow, taking you on to the home stretch back on the other side of the creek.
But there is still a last surprise: you will see things that you have not seen on the way out, which is astonishing if you consider that the Mühlenbach is hardly the Rhine and occasionally so narrow that you feel that you could, if your life depended on it (and you got enough of a run-up), leap over to the other side without getting your feet wet.
But although you are walking only a few metres away from the trail you passed on the way out, there is enough variety on offer to keep you entertained.
Above all, however, the Ladbergen Pättkes trail (a pättkes is the local dialect’s word for a small path) demonstrates that the idea of the spazierwanderweg trails can, in fact, work.
Not that you would want to travel from the UK never mind the US to Ladbergen, but this is still a great half-day out if you are spending a hiking holiday in the region (there are, after all, ten Teutoschleifchen, some longer loops called the Teutoschleifen and one of Germany’s classic long-distance trails, the Hermannshöhen, for “proper” hiking tours) and are looking for a trail which allows you to take it easy for a day.
And easy it certainly is: there is no climbing involved (the difference in altitude adds up to a majestic total of 5 metres) and no orienteering either, while Ladbergen may be small but provides enough places where you can have a snack, an ice cream or a long lunch afterwards.
Easy hikers cannot ask for much more than that.
