Given duration: 4h45
Achieved duration: 4h15

These are the overall timings for the entire hiking route, which I split over 2 days.

The truth is I was totally out of condition before doing this walk, although I try to complete between 6,000 and 10,000 steps each day. So I decided to divide it into two parts, using local buses to get back to the parking lot in the forest near the Harpenersee. The weather was clear and sunny and it was not particularly cold, but the trees were bare and there was a strong element of greyness during the whole walk. This is a suburban walk through the outskirts of Bochum, which is not the prettiest city of Germany. So expect to see the back end of logistic centers and shopping malls, heavily trafficked highways and bypass roads, flyovers and autobahn slip roads. And, don't you love them, roundabouts designed in a way that was never intended to be the case, which ensure a total loss of orientation (and I am good at orientation), whether you are a driver or a pedestrian. The route also takes you past the former Opel works, a huge piece of ground that is being repurposed for other industrial uses. Many a Kadett and Astra sprung out of this place.



Ducks on the shore of the Harpenersee (Lake Harpen) near the beginning of the hike


A stretch of the hike along a farm road near Kornharpen, a suburb of Bochum

These urban aspects are interspersed with some fields and farmland here and there, with a slag heap as a backdrop and many wooded areas that must be pleasant when the vegetation is on the trees. During the two days I was on this hike, you could see incredibly ugly apartment blocks and office buildings through the bare trees. Just occasionally there was an old building and some ornate terraced housing, which probably was formerly inhabited by families of the upper management of the coal mines and other industries. This is one of the aspects of the Ruhrgebiet that I find fascinating: those architectural vestiges which refer to an earlier period and sometimes predate the industrial revolution.



A realigned railway bridge on Buselohstrasse, which cuts the street into two separate parts - here I am standing where the original bridge crossed the railway


An underpass enabling pedestrians (and hikers) to cross the busy Sheffield-Ring, also known as Oviedo-Ring (after the industrial cities in northern England and northern Spain)

The best parts of this walk are the sections which follow the shores of two lakes, the Harpenersee at the beginning of the walk and the Ümmingersee later on during the second part of the hike. It is worth budgeting a bit of extra time just to stop and enjoy the surroundings - I timed my small picnic with the walk along the shore of the Ümmingersee on the second day. Would I recommend this hike? If you have to drive a long way to get to this walk, I would say no, don't bother, there are probably nicer hikes closer to where you are. But if you're in the region and you like hiking, then by all means, give it a go.



This part of the hike would be more pleasant when there are leaves on the trees, but here you can see the proximity of modern offices and housing


An idyllic sort of view where the walking route joined the shore of the Ümmingersee

I didn't give Bochum a good press here, but it is worth visiting to see at least it's main attractions: the Deutsches Bergbau Museum (an interactive museum in a coal mine), the Zeiss Planetarium, the Bochum Dahlhausen Railway Museum (a huge open air site to the south of the city), and more. Bochum is also a center of musicals, just like Broadway, with shows every night.
And in the Bermuda Triangle neighbourhood in downtown Bochum there are lots of restaurants and cafes as well as a small place offering what is said to be the best Currywurst in the Ruhrgebiet.



The uppermost part of the Ümmingersee, just before the walk swings northwards back towards the car park near the Harpener Teiche