Hiking from Duisburg Großenbaum to Ratingen

Even though Duisburg is not quite the most popular city in Germany, there’s a really nice area between Düsseldorf and Duisburg. This area was what we explored today. And I was also excited about coming back to Duisburg after such a long time.

There are a few important points to keep in mind for a hike in Duisburg. Firstly, it is an extremely flat area. There are a few places where you can slightly go up or down, and it is somewhat crucial to include them on the hike (which I didn’t today). Secondly, you might end up in forests all the time depending on where you go. If you want a hike with a variety of landscapes, you should check (e.g. with google maps) that you get fields, rivers etc. And lastly, and maybe most importantly, there’s a huge number of cyclists on some paths. This is something that makes me crazy every now and then, but today, I guess we got a good trail where this was not quite a problem in the end.

I also changed the trail at a few locations, which made us go mostly not official paths, but then it became more interesting. Especially the path at the beginning, where it goes along a small stream, it looked almost like we weren’t in Duisburg. Absolutely marvelous. There was also a girl from Duisburg (also originally from Duisburg) who told me that it was the first time for her to go there (so was it for me as well).

Right in front of this city of Lintorf, there was a huge field where we could have a break outside for the first time in weeks. A really nice place, hard to believe that we were right next to Düsseldorf, although it was witnessed by the number of planes flying by every now and then.

Lintorf had a few cafés and restaurants. We could find a bakery large enough to offer enough space to all of us, though we had to go deep into Lintorf to find it.

Not quite surprisingly, we were to a certain extent tired at the end of the hike, probably because it was entirely flat and hard. Today’s trail is certainly not the one that you’d take if you’d hike only one time in the VRR region. For those like us, who hike regularly in the VRR region, it was nice to see something a little bit different. Especially because both Lintorf and Ratingen, where the hike finished, are quite beautiful.

You can find the trail from this link (in kml-format) or this link (in gpx-format)