RRRunning - Spring meets autumn

Eager to see what awaits us today in Wahner Heide, we start at the small hiking parking lot, which is somewhat hidden behind the A3. Here stretches a sparsely populated area of Rösrath that transitions into Wahner Heide. Coming from the urban settlement of Rösrath, we already have the feeling of entering another world here.

After starting our watches and stepping from the parking lot trees onto the open terrain, this other world immediately presents itself with a distant view towards Cologne and a grazed heath landscape. Here we stand on the edge of Busenberg at 100 meters above sea level. The former tank road downhill is still used today for driving cattle to the lower areas. There, the animals are used for landscape protection to prevent the species-rich open heathland from becoming overgrown.

And one of these herds, a herd of Glan cattle, grazes today on the open heath area "Under the Thick Hedges" directly at the foot of Busenberg. To the right, we turn onto a small path that leads along the fenced heath area. It gets a bit trail-like, and for a short stretch the forest surrounds us, interrupted only by a small nameless creek and an old pasture forest area.

There we turn left onto Brander Straße, and immediately left again for a short section on Wolfsweg, until we again turn left onto November.

Before the start of the route, we followed our curiosity and researched the origin of this unusual name for a path: The firebreak, already laid out during Prussian times, was named November by the Belgians during their use of Wahner Heide as a training ground. It was named after the letter N for November from the NATO phonetic alphabet.

So we don’t have to ponder further about the name’s origin and have a clear head for the view into the distance over the first 700 meters of November, along open grazed areas. On the right side, the ghost bush, on the left side again the area called "Under the Thick Hedges".

On this stretch of November, besides the modest Glan cattle, you can sometimes also observe donkeys or goats. With different preferences when feeding on grass or tougher shrubs, the grazing in the heath alternates. Otherwise, this cultural landscape could not be kept open and the specific biodiversity of the heath would be lost.

When tanks still rolled through the heath, they left large depressions in the ground. Water collected there and created mini biotopes for various animal species.

A smaller variant can be observed in the hollows on November. Today it was time again. Frog spawn laid in the shallow puddles has already hatched and hundreds of small tadpoles produce a considerable bustle in the water. Hopefully, rain will continue to fill the shallow pools in the near future until the little frogs can seek wider areas in Wahner Heide.

Following this hotspot of the nature reserve, November continues straight ahead through a denser forest. The ditches used for earlier drainage can be clearly seen parallel. On the section before the next open area, "On the Maar," there is a rewetted area on the left. Here the Sandbach and smaller tributaries bring water. The dam-like November path holds back this water and mostly turns the area into an interesting water body interspersed with half-submerged trees. November itself is often underwater here, causing wet shoes. The area On the Maar thus has the chance to permanently form a moor area again. This is important as a CO2 sink and as a biotope in the biodiversity of Wahner Heide.

Then we leave the forest and cross the crosswind runway of Cologne/Bonn airport. A stark contrast to the previous nature reserve but always a popular place to pause a hike, bike tour, or run and watch what is happening behind the fence. Possibly planes approaching for landing overhead. Today it is quiet; the wind seems long and not crosswise.

After a small path, we cross Alte Kölner Straße at a parking lot and encounter another highlight from a nature conservation perspective. Visual attention is first drawn to a series of massive steel bars. This was once a tank washing facility. In a concrete basin next to it, a still water area has formed with special inhabitants. The pond frogs are unmistakable. They puff up their cheeks and produce an incredible noise. The blue-green mosaic darner (dragonfly) also seems to be in mating mood today. Many pairs coupled together fly somewhat clumsily over the water or sit on the stems of pond plants.

After this short zoological discovery break, we continue on sandy ground between Cologne road and the airport area. Beautiful rolling heath terrain accompanies us on this stretch. On Geisberg, you can look over Hühnerbruch; the importance of this point in earlier times as a control point for cannonball impacts during shooting exercises is explained on a sign.

We have never run at the speed of a cannonball, so we continue at a leisurely running pace until a pond, the former clay pit pond. The wide fencing around the lake stems from its painful history of being used as a clay pit, waste disposal site, swimming lake, etc.

Even if there seem to be some wide paths left and right of the lake, clear warning signs indicate they should not be used to protect nature and quiet zones. We adhere to this rule, even though some eccentric hiking groups seem to ignore it.

The path now leads toward Altenrath. Crossing Alte Kölner Straße, we follow the "Kanne," the sign of the Hühnerbruch route, past a transformer house through bushes. We almost missed the entry, but by doing so we saved a small section along the road. That section then follows on Flughafenstraße toward Altenrath. Before the town, we turn left down a path to a series of small lakes fed by three small streams, ultimately flowing into the Agger river.

Between the first two lakes, the path leads uphill. Through a young light green forest, it goes up to a fenced area where we briefly turn onto Hasbacher Straße before following a path parallelly through the forest. At another small pond, not marked on the map, we turn again onto Hasbacher Straße, relaxing our legs on this unobstructed running path.

The last turn of the route takes us along Hasbacher Wiesen and later Brander Wiesen for the last 2 km. On Hasbacher Wiesen today, we see the herd of water buffalo living here.

On the rest of the way, we no longer encounter further highlights, which, after the abundance of impressions, is quite relaxing, allowing us to concentrate on our running pace.

Back at Busenberg, we once again look over the vastness of Wahner Heide and stop our running watches. Due to many photo stops, we discreetly omit our total time and only note the moving time. The times in between, the running breaks, were worth every moment today in a special and worthy of protection natural landscape, the Wahner Heide nature reserve.