Paul Scraton discovers pine forests, sand dunes and run-down industrial estates on Brandenburg’s 66-Lake-Trail…
For the last four kilometres through the forest north of the spa town Bad Saarow, we do not meet a soul. Signposts and waymarkers amongst the trees suggest that this must be a popular hiking and Nordic walking spot in the summer; but out of high season we have the place to ourselves.
It is an undulating landscape, one of crevices and hillocks formed at the end of the last ice age, when the retreating glaciers managed to deposit two huge stones – now known as the Markgrafensteine – around which picnic tables have been built. With weary legs, the slight inclines suddenly feel steep, and we hardly talk during the final stretch. Both of us, perhaps, are imagining removing our boots and reaching for a well-deserved bottle of beer.
Twenty kilometres and about five hours earlier, we had climbed down from the Berlin-Frankfurt (Oder) train at the station of Hangelsberg, about 35-minutes after leaving Alexanderplatz station. The plan was to attempt a couple of stages of the 66-Seen-Wanderweg (66-Lake-Trail), a 17-stage, 416 kilometre walking route that loops around Berlin, passing through Potsdam and the Brandenburg countryside, conveniently intersecting with various Berlin S-Bahn stations at various points.
The route not only offers a tour through the melancholy beauty of Berlin’s hinterland, but also the social and political history of a region that was part of the