Alte Fahrt Dortmund-Ems Canal near Olfen

Idyllic bike path along the old route between Datteln and Olfen.

Since 1937, the canal has been straightened and widened to the southeast around the city. This is called the new trip or the second trip.
With the new journey, the route that had now become the old journey lost its importance. In the 1980s, due to the high maintenance costs, it was decided to dismantle this route, whereby part of the canal and in particular the bridges of the Lippe and Stever, which characterize the landscape, remained underneath the canal. From Datteln to shortly before Olfen, the canal character is still preserved. In sections sealed off by transverse dams, a long biotope has been created with the water level reduced for stability, which ends at the former city harbor. The canal has been filled in in the city center. Only at the northern end, where it meets the second voyage, did a marina emerge in the old canal route. In the center of the village it became an elongated green corridor on a high embankment with an educational tree path. Today the Dortmund-Ems Canal cycle route, the "Rundum Olfen" tour and the Steverauenweg, which is presented in more detail later, run on it.

The "Alte Fahrt" is the old, original and partly still preserved Dortmund-Ems Canal.