Hiking makes you smart and creative - have you already experienced this? When your legs are on the move, your mind comes to rest - and ideas or insights suddenly appear out of nowhere. In the Teutoburg Forest / Eggegebirge Nature Park, such realisations are guaranteed to come at regular intervals. It's not just the good air and the healing climate that are good for body and soul, but also the specially designed hiking trails, some short and adventurous especially for families with children, others longer and educational. On the ClimateExperienceRoutes, for example, you can breathe in the soothing, healing climatic air and learn along the way to what extent climatic conditions and changes affect the plant and animal world, as well as humans.
Travelling in different climate zones
Climatic influences are particularly easy to recognise in this low mountain region between Bielefeld and Diemelsee, as two climate zones meet here: Atlantic climate in the west and continental climate to the east of the mountain ranges. In the Teutoburg Forest / Eggegebirge Nature Park, you can see how differences in temperature and humidity allow different plants to grow. There are a total of five ClimateExperienceRoutes to choose from. At 17 kilometres, the longest and most challenging route leads up to Velmerstot, the highest mountain in the Eggegebirge at 468 metres, and through the picturesque Silberbach Valley. Along the way, you will learn, for example, how climate change and the risk of sunburn are linked and that plants can also get sunburnt, but can also protect themselves.
Hiking fun at the highest level
Would you like a few more kilometres? The NaturZeitReise themed trails not only offer even more hiking fun over a distance of up to 46 kilometres, but also highlight the influence of humans, who have been changing the landscape through their use and settlement for centuries. Hiking pleasure XXL can be found above all on the Hermannshöhen https://www.nrw-tourismus.de/a-hermannshoehen , which is one of the Top Trails of Germany and leads past sights such as the Externsteine https://www.nrw-tourismus.de/externsteine-horn-bad-meinberg and the Hermann Monument. In case your feet need a break: Every year at Easter, the nature park bus starts running and commutes through the nature park every hour at weekends and on public holidays until the end of October. The stops include excursion destinations such as the Hermann Monument and Externsteine, the bird park and the open-air museum.
Short and interactive: routes for families
For families with children, there are shorter themed routes that provide information about nature, species and climate protection at interactive experience stations. On the family version of the Paderborn High Trail https://www.nrw-tourismus.de/a-paderborner-hoehenweg, young and old can experience the changes in nature at eight different stations.
Want to delve deeper into the topic? Later this year, the Climate Experience World will open in Oerlinghausen, a new exhibition centre that makes climate change and adaptation options particularly vivid and tangible. This includes, for example, the reorganisation of the personal living environment, but also future-oriented agriculture and forestry. In the neighbouring Senne large-scale nature conservation project, possible implementations can be seen on site.
