The best traffic-free bike rides around Henstedt-Ulzburg

Now and then you pass old railway operating buildings and facilities, such as loading and unloading ramps or the old Grabau station.

Overall, it's a bit monotonous and boring to ride. However, it's perfectly fine as a change of pace between trails or gravel roads.

a very idyllic tour at 6 a.m.

The Himmelmoor was once the largest raised bog in Schleswig-Holstein, originally covering around 600 hectares. Peat was extracted here from 1780 until 2018. Even before the extraction was halted, the Himmelmoor was gradually being renaturalized and rewetted. There are two circular hiking trails where you can learn about the bog, a hiking trail that follows the trail of the peat railway, and, since 2012, a bridleway around the bog. Several viewing platforms offer an overview of the plots. On some weekends, tours are also available on the peat railway, a historic trolley railway. Parts of the Himmelmoor are an EU-protected fauna and flora habitat (FFH), while others are a landscape conservation area or nature reserve of the Pinneberg district.

Peat cutting, i.e., the above-ground extraction of peat, is no longer economically viable today. Peat as a fuel has largely been replaced by other high-energy fossil fuels. Many large-scale peatlands suitable for industrial extraction have now been drained. New peat cutting areas are only permitted under strict conditions. Raised bogs have an important regulatory effect on the water balance due to the large amounts of precipitation they can absorb. The preservation of the original habitats serves landscape conservation and species protection, as most species of peatland flora and fauna are considered threatened or critically endangered. Bogs grow extremely slowly; an intact peat body increases in thickness by only one millimeter per year. It therefore takes a thousand years for a one-meter-high layer of peat to form. Thus, bog areas recover very slowly during restoration attempts.

The reclamation of the Himmelmoor began around 1780. Its edges were divided into 1,000 to 5,000 square meter plots and transferred to farmers from neighboring villages for peat extraction. Industrial peat extraction began in the 1870s. Peat was now also extracted from the center of the moor using machines. Peat excavators extracted the black peat, compressed it, and divided it into sods. Turning the drying sods was increasingly done by machine, as was the collection of the dry peat. The low-energy fuel was packaged and loaded at the peat works.

I passed through there on September 8, 1925, on my "Bevern and Hemdingen" tour. This tour features many beautiful forest paths.

Simply an experience!