GRAVELING TROUGH THE RUHR

Hand on heart: Who of you has ever been to the Ruhr region? And which of you has not thought at least once that the Ruhr is just a region criss-crossed by motorways, railways and motorways that cut through industrial plants, factories and far too narrow housing silos. In between, smoking chimneys, crashing noise and small bourgeois working-class settlements. You don't want to go there. There's bad air and noise everywhere.

Gotcha! In 2022 you can throw all these prejudices overboard and see for yourself what the region and its 5 million inhabitants in western Germany are all about.

It simply can't be that an area of 4500 km², which is also the largest conurbation in Germany and the fourth largest in Europe, is still so underestimated.

In the Gravel story with Tobi Woggon, we want to take you into the world of the Potts and show you a route that you can follow and retrace on Komoot.

WHERE DOES THE POTT BEGIN - WHERE DOES IT END?

The region affectionately known as the "Pott", with its five core cities, includes

Throughout the Pott you will travel through the history of coal mining, which only came to an end in the 1950s with the coal and steel crisis.

HOW DID THE REGION GET ITS NAME "POTT"?

The name "Pott" used today comes from coal mining. Tobi explained to us that the area used to be called "Kohlepott", meaning coal pot. Today it is only known as "Pott".

It was only in 2018 that the last colliery (Prosper Haniel) closed its doors and the great digging was over. Too costly, too inefficient and ultimately no longer sustainable from an ecological point of view.

In the meantime, the region has changed a lot. The old "dirty" mining era has ended and made way for services, research, culture and tourism.

Many collieries and blast furnaces have become tourist magnets as industrial monuments.

Some of the simple workers' housing estates have become beautiful residential areas, large universities have sprung up and some city centres have become veritable culture and shopping miles, while some hip trendy districts have developed on the outskirts of the city centres. (e.g. Rü, Kreuzviertel, Ehrenfeld).

SLAGHEAPS - THE MOUNTAINS OF THE POTTS

Even though there is not much left of the once muddy Ruhr area, the A40 still runs right through the Pott and divides it into the "rich south" and the "poor north".

And it is precisely there in the north that a phenomenal playground has developed - especially for gravel bikers - because all the earth that was extracted from the depths next to the coal lies nicely heaped up on decorative slagheaps to the left and right, which are easy to climb on a gravel bike.

To show how profound the change can be, Tobi started far to the west. 

GRAVELING BETWEEN CHIMNEYS AND BLAST FURNACES

We continue north to the disused ironworks in Duisburg-Meiderich. Here, a gigantic landscape park has been created around the old works, inviting you to explore the industrial facilities. With the gravel bikes it is ideal to ride between the blast furnaces, chimneys and all kinds of pipes.

WHEN NRW IS AT YOUR FEET

The next destination is the Haniel slag heap. At 184m above zero, it's the second-highest slagheap in the Pott region and the surrounding area is still just under 160m high. A good afternoon destination for Tobi.

At the top there is a spectacular panoramic view. Everyone pulls out their mobile phones to feed their Insta stories. One minute you're riding on washed-out gravel trails through dense forest, the next you've got half of NRW at your feet.

The view goes almost all the way to Münsterland. And you find yourself standing in a landscape that seems quite similar to Mars.

At this point at the latest, it was clear that the Pott would have a lot in store. So Tobi set off for what is probably the most famous landmark - the Tetraeader - a three-sided pyramid on the Beckstrasse slagheap in Bottrop, which at 90m (above ambient level) just scrapes the 100m mark.

The view is once again spectacular! The thirst for adventure was aroused.

The next slagheaps were:

Just a moment ago in the middle of the juggernaut of the big city and now high up on a gravel plain surrounded by greenery. Contrasts can't get any closer.

Other intermediate destinations were:

The Rheinelbe slagheap almost drains the last of our energy from our saddlebags. We take the last few metres up the steep Himmelstreppe on foot.

FROM ROMANTIC LAKES TO CURRYWURST

Now Tobi cycles further southeast through Bochum, past the planetarium and the mining museum, and soon he is back on the Ruhr.

There is no sign of the "Pott" here.

In addition, there are a few villas and the large Kemnader See lake, where sailboats make their rounds. Tobi seemed to be south of the A40...

Through woods and meadows we head towards Witten.

INSIDER TIP:

On the way is Eddi's Wurst und Durstexpress. For over 50 years, they've been frying up a fabulous curry sausage here, and it has catapulted Eddie's shop into the top 3 of the best Pott Pommesbuden.

CONTINUE GRAVELING IN THE DIRECTION OF DORTMUND

Here you come to the beautiful Phoenix Lake.

The Phoenix Lake is an artificial lake on the former steelworks site Phoenix-Ost in the Dortmund district of Hörde.

It was and is discussed as a showcase project for the structural transformation of the city of Dortmund and the Ruhr region. Some of BVB's top stars are said to have found shelter in the adjacent villas.

A FITTING FINALE FOR THE POT

The journey continues eastwards with stops in between.

in search of a finale for the tour that does it justice. Since the tour began so stylishly in Schimanski Gasse, passed through dozens of filming locations of "The Miracle of Bern" and the street from Kerkeling's childhood, it can really only end where a milestone in German cinema history also had its finale.

The cult film BangBoomBang (since its theatrical release in 1999, it is still shown regularly at the UCI Bochum) had its showdown at Dortmund airport, so it is clear that this is where the tour had its finale for Tobi.

Although the tour, viewed in retrospect on Komoot, gives a zigzag picture, Tobi has by no means seen everything there is to discover and explore. It is also clear that this tour is a must for gravelers. We could not have climbed any of the slagheaps on shallow asphalt.

So a road bike would be a no-go. And even Tobias, who usually goes on his adventures in remote places like Peru, Chile or Kamchatka, was often amazed by the diversity here in the Pott.