Barkhausen: Nature and the Alme Cycle Path

Barkhausen can be considered for travel planning from three perspectives: its medieval settlement history, the Barkhausen dry valley and the Alme Cycle Path. Nature and cycling offer different focuses. If you are looking for a hotel, you can first decide whether local history, landscape or a cycling tour should shape your stay.

History and nature at the dry valley

The local history includes the medieval settlement of Barkhusen, which disappeared in the 15th century. Created in 2016, the Barkhausen dry valley was shaped over a length of 360 metres and a width of 40 to 90 metres. Monitoring in 2021 recorded more than 90 species of aculeate hymenopterans from the wild bee fauna in the dry valley area. Surveys in 2023 and 2024 show that many threatened bird species use the dry valley as a habitat or search for food there.

The information highlights two different aspects of the same natural area: the recorded aculeate hymenopteran species and the use of the valley by threatened birds. This places a quantified finding from monitoring alongside later observations of habitat use and foraging.

Cycling and route planning

The Alme Cycle Path is around 68 kilometres long and runs through Barkhausen in the Alme valley, which is largely protected as a nature reserve, from the source to the mouth. GPS data for the cycle path can be downloaded free of charge from its website and the Teuto_Navigator tour portal. Check the download options when planning a future tour.

The wider travel destination of Paderborn also offers the signposted Paderborn West Loop (PB 4), a cycling tour of about 34 kilometres. It leads to Wewer and through the western Paderborn landscape on to Lake Lippesee. Compared with the Alme Cycle Path, which is around 68 kilometres long, both the total distances and the routes described differ: one follows the Alme valley from source to mouth, while the other goes to Wewer and continues to Lake Lippesee.

Paderborn as a wider travel destination

The wider travel destination of Paderborn adds its own urban and cultural context to the focus on nature and cycling. More than 200 Pader springs rise in Paderborn city centre; the Pader spring area below the cathedral and Abdinghof is a protected garden monument. The Pader rises in Paderborn and is considered Germany’s shortest river.

The Museum in the Imperial Palace presents the history of Paderborn and Westphalia from the 6th to the 12th century. One focus is Charlemagne’s imperial palace, which he had built in 777 above the Pader springs as the first and only palace he established in Saxony. The Bartholomew Chapel in Paderborn is considered the oldest known hall church on German soil and is remarkable for its distinctive acoustics.

The permanent exhibition at the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum covers 5,000 years of the past, present and future of information technology—from cuneiform writing to calculating and typewriting machines, the internet and robotics. Visitors can also use telephones from earlier times, try historical and modern computer games, and talk to Max, a virtual being.

Discover more destinations

Hövelhof, Altenbeken, Lichtenau, Bad Wünnenberg, Herbram, Borchen, Büren, Delbrück

Back to the wider travel overview: Paderborn.