The Ruhr Valley passage. Simply fabulous.
The Ruhr near Fröndenberg, Photo: Manfred Vollmer
The history of black gold in the Ruhr Valley and its many estuaries on the edge of the slate hills began as early as the mythical age of history.
Fable has it that this is where Siegfried cast his miraculous sword at the workshop of the gnome Alberich – there is no historic evidence for this, but it might make sense from a natural history point of view. This is where, in the Franconian age, the monks of Werden, a suburb to the south of present-day Essen, wrote the “Codex Argenteus” and the “Heliand”, the first translation of the Bible into German. Here stands the oldest parish church north of the Alps. Anyone following the Ruhr passage will be travelling through an ancient manmade region to encounter, by contrast with all the cliches about the Ruhr, castles, idyllic backwaters, churches and cloisters behind every bend in the river.