Nature park trail Schwalenberger Wald - North route

"NaturZeitReise" - Stories about the Schwalenberger Forest Is there anything more beautiful than hiking through the forest on a sunny day? Simply being on the move under your own power, breathing in the fresh air under the green canopy of leaves, enjoying the play of sunlight between the treetops, and absorbing the diversity of the forest with all your senses?
To many people, the forest is still the epitome of nature and primeval wilderness. Over generations, Germans in particular have developed a "legendary" relationship with the forest. Romantics have poetically and artistically idealized it as a place of yearning. The Brothers Grimm elevated the forest in their fairy tales to a seat of a fantastic world with fairies, witches, and dwarfs. Apart from this world of fantasy, the forest also has its own unique history. And it is this history that the Teutoburg Forest / Egge Mountains Nature Park wants to tell with its Nature Time Journey through the Schwalenberger Forest.
The Schwalenberger Forest is located on a mountain massif rising up to 446 meters. With its approximately 27 km², it is one of the significant forest areas in Lippe. Its over 70 percent deciduous forest makes it a protected area of European importance. On the mountain ridge lies a former moor, the "Mörth," whose once waterlogged area is clearly delineated by the afforestation with spruces. Endangered animal and plant species find their home in the dominant beech forest community.
The Schwalenberger Forest has a very eventful history, which the new nature park trail traces at selected experience locations. It quickly becomes clear that over the centuries, people have repeatedly used and altered the forest according to their needs. They drove cows, goats, and pigs to graze in the forest and took leaves as bedding for the animals in the stables during the winter. The forest was their only source of energy, as well as a raw material producer for everyday necessities and a supplier of building timber for shelter. In the Early Modern period and at the beginning of industrialization, people consumed the forest faster than ever before. With large-scale logging, forest owners could quickly earn money. Furthermore, the glassworks literally devoured the wood of the Schwalenberger Forest due to their high energy demand. Exploitation of the forest was commonplace, leading to a severe wood shortage. What remained was a devastated, barren landscape.
But the worst was averted. Today, we find an intact forest landscape in the same area - only names remind us of that past time, like the Kahlenberg, whose afforestation led to the overgrowth of Lippe's most beautiful historical observation tower.
"Sustainability" is the keyword for modern forestry. Its maxim is: "Do not remove more wood mass from the forest than is simultaneously regrown." The Lippe Regional Association, as the owner of the Schwalenberger Forest, fully commits to this principle.
In the Schwalenberger Forest, "witnesses of time" and "time windows" set up along the hiking trail by the nature park provide information on many of these forest stories and guide the hiker's gaze specifically to the still recognizable historical relics.
Habitat-preserving measures such as the creation and reactivation of species protection waters, the bundling planting of a lime tree, and additional plantings in an orchard were on the agenda when establishing the nature park trail. Naturally, during the hike, scientific information is also provided on, among other things, the importance of deadwood in the forest or the uniqueness of the Mörth as the highest spawning ground for great crested newts in North Rhine-Westphalia.
The history of the Schwalenberger Forest can be explored on two loops of approximately 18 km each. The views from the edge of the forest into the landscape on both sides of the mountain ridge are a delight for enthusiasts. The nature park has also created rest areas for hikers and placed landscape loungers at two particularly inviting locations for well-being in nature.
For generations, the forest has always been an ambivalent reference point for people. The old myths of the forest may no longer play a big role in the minds of modern people today, but exciting "forest stories" are still being told. The "Naturparktrail Schwalenberger Wald" in the Teutoburg Forest / Egge Mountains Nature Park is an example of this.