Wednesday, 14 September 2022

The Winterthur Rundweg

The Winterthur Rundweg is a series of 10 hikes which take you all around the outskirts of Winterthur, in a big fascinating 70km circle. My tandem gesprach friend, Luzia, and I have decided to walk each stage while we chat, I need to learn German/Swissgerman and she wants to learn English and the Rundweg will provide the perfect backdrop for our intercultural Gesprach.

The Rundweg website is brilliant. It provides an interactive map for each stage, the length, an approximate time to walk the distance and shows the elevations of each walk. So today we tackled:

Etappe Hegiberg - 6.5km - 1.45

On the Rundweg website, this stage is described like this:

The boundaries between city and countryside are fluid: a second urban center with spacious green areas, such as the Eulachpark, is being created on the former Sulzer site in Oberwinterthur. In rural Tolhusen, eggs are sold at the vending machine and the secluded nature reserve ponds are disguised reservoirs.

We met up at the starting point at Hegi Bahnhof at 2pm. A little walk took us along the track before we could cross it with a neat tunnel underneath, beautifully painted with trees.

On the far side a wonderful little winding path beckoned us on, disappearing gently into the woods. This brought us to what looked a little like a hobbit house - it was actually some kind of well – and a stairway taking us to the Hegiberg woods above. The walk was beautifully scenic and peaceful, taking us past a very alien looking kiln. The charcoal kiln was set up in 2006 by the Läbesruum association and the Oberwinterthur timber corporation as a project for the unemployed. From 2015, the Köhlerverein Andelbach took it over to produce charcoal from local beech trees.

There were lots of cows dotted around and some goats regarded us cooley as we entered the tiny village of Tolhusen,. The weather was warm, with the odd, refreshing shower to cool us down. Perfect 'wandern^ weather really.

When we reached the endpoint at Tolhusen Bushaltestelle (in just under 2 hours) we were relieved to find we’d arrived 10 minutes before the next bus was due – in Tolhusen the bus usually only comes but once per hour…I did enjoy how our bus driver received a very friendly wave from everyone he saw. What a friendly place!

Toptip: think about arriving to coincide with a bus or you will have a long wait at the side of the road.

www.rundweg.winterthur.ch













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