>> towpath
The towpath can still be seen in many places in the Ruhr Valley on one or both banks of the Ruhr. In the past, several cold blood horses used to pull the Ruhr ships upstream. After the expansion of the middle Ruhr into a shipping route in the second half of the 18th century, the river was navigable to Witten in 1780. Until the beginning of railway construction, it became the most important transport route for coal, but also for other goods.
From today's perspective, the small ships, the "Ruhraaken", had a lifting capacity of around 150 tons. The upstream movement of the ships against the current was mostly time-consuming. The towpath occasionally changed banks, so that the draft horses had to be brought to the other side of the Ruhr again and again by boat. In the long run, this means of transport was no match for the more flexible railway. After its peak in 1850, shipping gradually declined and was finally discontinued in 1889.
The majority of the towpath routes that are still preserved today are paved and converted into walking and cycling trails. The original paving was left in only a few places. This also applies to the towpath directly at the former Holteyer harbor.