Schwarze Heide hike – atmospheric

The starting point of today's tour has a dark history: here in the Hildesheim Forest, a secret armaments factory was built from 1937, in the second half of the war electrics from Hildesheim were installed in practically all German tanks. While the historic city center was then bombed out a few weeks before the end of the war, the well-camouflaged plant came through the war unscathed and has since developed into one of the largest Bosch locations. A good 1km after the start you reach the first highlight of the round: the Marienrode monastery, founded in 1125, with the monastery church of St. Michael, built between 1412 and 1462. A few meters further you have a wonderful view over the pond back to the monastery complex, then you go past the Marienrode windmill with youth hiking center in the direction of the Black Heath nature reserve. This small NSG can be reached after a passage through the blossoming cherry tree avenue on Neuhofer Straße and also blossoming rapeseed fields, at the height of Barienrode you have a beautiful view of Hildesheim. The Black Heath has been a nature reserve since 1987 with an area of 10 hectares and is now also kept free by highland cattle - unfortunately they have probably already finished work today... After the weather is still playing along, I'll add Diekholzen and the Sonnenberg to it, the sections through the Beusterklamm and up to the Hildesheim observation tower are very pleasant to walk. Unfortunately, the lookout tower is not accessible when the restaurant is closed, and the peacocks in the trees are making a good noise 🙈 But you can easily bypass the closed area and then have another nice path down to the Bosch site, from there it is a stone's throw to the starting point. All in all, a very varied and recommendable round, next time with a tower ascent and a restaurant 😊