Hilden -> Ittertal -> Gruiten hike

After a long hiking hiatus in the latter part of the winter, by the beginning of April I was itching to get outside again and look at some actual nature. I spent a while poring over my map for a route that was near Duesseldorf but led me away from the many many satellite towns and villages. The countryside here is relatively built up (though not as densely tarmacked-over as, say, suburban London), but it is criss-crossed with shallow valleys that remain as thin seams of quiet between the towns. This is probably thanks to a combination of their dampness, awkward access, and obvious natural value.

I spotted a likely candidate, the Ittertal, and connected up a few other paths through greener bits of the map until I had a route of 16km or so. The start of my route was in Hilden, and there were a couple of rather suburban kilometres before it found its way into a quieter marsh and valley section. I say quieter, but the spring woodland birdsong really was very loud indeed! I passed via the marshy lowlands over a sandy heath of windblown glacial dust (much like those found in Austria!) and then back into another valley. All the while civilisation was just visible either side of the thin strip of nature I was travelling along, but there was plenty of wildlife, and I saw some beautiful nuthatches, a stunningly pink male bulfinch and an extremely boastful show-off of a wren, who was around the entire time I was having lunch...

It was at lunchtime I reached the Ittertal proper, one of those wooded valleys with low, damp meadows and frequent mills that seem very common to this area. As with the similar Neandertal, its natural state belies the fact that it was very industrially active in the 19th century. The mills in the Ittertal were used to produce sharp razor blades from the copious steel made in nearby factories, until the trade volume became too much for the inefficient little roads leading into and out of the valleys. Nowadays each mill is a smart black and white half timbered building with the obligatory green shutters and with flowers everywhere, looking like the valley had always been a peaceful nature reserve.

The route took me by some more modern additions to the valley like a water park and water treatment centre, definite indicators of the large population of this area, and then up a quiet tributary where the birdsong resumed in earnest. This didn't last long however as emerging from the idyllic valley (that could easily have been in the Wienerwald) it was back to crossing big roads and suburbia. The final part of the route took me across some sweeping industrial-size farm fields under the shadows of power lines, before I ended up at the station in Gruiten for my train home. All in all a great walk for the variety and abundance of wildlife I spotted, but interspersed with a lot of reminders of the busy nature of this urban area!

Hope you enjoy my gallery of a few of the natural delights to be found hiding between the villages and towns around Duesseldorf!

bis bald,

der Tom

Duesseldorf City Centre (and Wuppertal pictures)

 

As I think I mentioned before, I currently live in Duesseldorf. However, I really don't get into the centre of town much. However, the centre of Duesseldorf is very nice indeed! There's a lot of lovely old architecture in the very centre, but the best thing is the way it mixes with all the newer stuff into a varied landscape. There's a lot to discover wandering around, if you know where to look, and those discoveries make it a great place for an aimless walk. Obviously Vienna is more classically beautiful, but something that even the Viennese have to admit is that the 1st district is very architecturally monotonous in aggregate. Even if every house has a *different* crazy menagerie of over the top plaster gods and beasts, it's still all over the top mengeries, y'know?

Probably my favourite building is the Stahlhof, built in 1909. This monumental red sandstone building was basically built by the steel barons of Duesseldorf as a statement of their immense prestige and wealth. It's an incredible building and a big contrast with architecture from the 19th century. There's huge chiselled robot-like faces, steel workers holding each other up, massive sandstone cogs and chain motifs, odd diversions into egyptian and greek imagery, and many many sandstone reliefs of elements of the steelworkers trade.

My other favourite part of the centre of Duesseldorf has to be the parks, which, though small, are wonderfully woven in between all the other buildings. They are also full of parrots (OK, parakeets), which are my OTHER other favourite thing about Duesseldorf and really liven the place up! Nothing like standing next to the famous Art Academy of Duesseldorf, steeped in 19th century grandeur and with a very illustrious list of alumni, as a flight of screaming green parakeets goes overhead. 
Of course there is also the Rhine, with the narrow streets giving way to the huge open bend of the river, barges constantly passing in both directions and the TV tower lighting up on the horizon!

I have explored a lot of the centre by now, thanks to my numerous visitors here, but most of the time I have been exploring and not photographing... However, one cold and slightly snowy day in February, with the sun just occasionally peeking through the sky, I remembered to bring my camera as I took my friend Steve on the rounds of the city. Having eaten our fill at one of the amazing Japanese restaurants here (Duesseldorf has about 1% Japanese inhabitants!) we then hopped on the train to explore Wuppertal, the nearby city with a fantastic suspended railway system which is a must see if you are excited by hanging, swinging trains over rivers...

So anyway, hope you enjoy this small set of photos from our snowy day out! Click ze link for more...

as always, bis bald,

der Tom