Bad Iburg tree­top trail

Since Nieder­sachsen’s State Garden Show in 2018, Osnab­rück­er Land and the TERRA.vita Nature- and Geo­park have had a new at­trac­tion. Next to the garden show site, where the ground starts to rise from Bad Iburg up in­to the hills of the Teuto­burg Forest, a 450-metre tree­top trail has been built with sup­port from Nieder­sachsen’s min­istry of eco­nom­ic af­fairs. What makes this path spe­cial is the con­trasts provided by the town, Iburg Castle, the forest and mod­ern Kneipp ther­apies like ‘forest bathing’, a stress man­age­ment meth­od. The tree­top trail is part of the spa’s forest park, which is home to many de­cidu­ous trees up to 250 years old. With their many cracks and hol­lows, the trees provide homes for five dif­fer­ent spe­cies of bat. The site is also peppered with nat­ur­al re­ju­ven­a­tions of trees of vary­ing ages and spe­cies. Copses of con­ifers, some of which fea­ture some real stand-out in­di­vidu­al trees, en­rich the forest land­scape and provide ample vari­ety.

You are sure to no­tice these dif­fer­ent levels of the forest as you climb or take the lift up the 32-metre-high en­trance tower. The sta­tions along the path, which are shaped like birds’ nests, provide in­form­a­tion about the nature, geo­logy, his­tory and unique per­son­al­ity of the forest. You re­turn to the ground from the exit tower, which is only 11 metres high.

Un­der the leafy can­opy it’s al­most com­pletely quiet: you can only hear faint voices in the dis­tance, the twit­ter­ing of birds, and the whis­per of the wind. You can smell the leaves, wood and res­in. The Bad Iburg tree­top trail in­vites you to plunge in­to the forest and ex­per­i­ence it in three di­men­sions. For more in­form­a­tion, vis­it the tree­top trail’s web­site.