Caminho do Lein às margens do Ruhr em Hattingen

The towpath in Hattingen is a beautiful, flat route and offers various stopping points with places to sit. It is also very suitable for (smaller) children. For a longer tour, it is the connection to the Baldeneysee in the south of Essen or to the Kemnader See in Bochum.

The nature reserve Ruhraue Hattingen Winz is a nature reserve on the Ruhr in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, covering about 119 hectares, ie just under 1.2 km². It is located entirely in the district Winz in the southwest of the district Winz-Baak of Hattingen. The NSG is located in a river loop and includes a grassland embossed floodplain area, which extends for about five kilometers along the shore on the right or northern side of the Ruhr.
The protected area was set up in the course of the landscape plan of the Ennepe-Ruhr district in 1998.

In many places in the Ruhr valley the towpath can be seen on one or both banks of the Ruhr. In the past, mostly heavy horses used to pull the Ruhr vessels upstream. After the expansion of the middle Ruhr to the shipping lane in the second half of the 18th century, the river was in 1780 to Witten passable. It was until the beginning of railway construction to the main transport route for the coal, but also for other merchandise.
From today's perspective, the small ships, the "Ruhraaken", had a lifting capacity of about 150 tons. The journey of the ships upstream against the current was usually time consuming. The towpath changed occasionally the shore, so that the draft horses had to be brought over and over again with the ship on the other side of the Ruhr. In the long term, this mode of transport was not up to the more flexible railways. After its peak in 1850, shipping gradually receded and finally ceased in 1889.
Most of the towpaths that are still preserved today have been tarred and converted into walking and cycling paths. Only in a few places have you left the original paving. So also at the towpath directly below the castle ruins on Isenberg between Niederwenigern and Hattingen.