We arrived early in the morning and as it was a Sunday that was good, because a little bit later the parking ground was completely full. The museum gives a detailed and fascinating overview of the development and changes of Westphalian everyday life and cultural history.

The museum is very large and has a lot to see, so bring enough time and if you want to save money, bring your own food and something to drink for a great day at the museum.

After visiting the LWL-Open-Air Museum in Detmold we drove back home. Originally we wanted to stop again in Bielefeld on the way back to Holland, but it was getting late and we had seen and done enough already for this time. We’ll be back.

Bad Meinberg is a spa town with two mineral springs, a historical Kurpark and many health and wellness related offers. The center of town is within walking distance of the camper park.

We liked it here but as the weekend was coming to an end, we had to get going and luckily the day started with a blue sky.

The Exterseine have been modified and decorated by humans over the centuries and were a place for pagan rituals prior to the arrival of Christianity in this region. Access to the Extersteine is free, but during the day one has to pay for parking and climbing up the pillars.

In 2001 the renovated building was opened to the public as museum and since a guided tour shows us how paper and cardboard have been produced over the past 300 years. We found the tour to be very interesting. It was amazing to see how much work it takes to create a simple sheet of paper.

The Papiermühle Plöger is open to the public from May until the end of October on Saturdays (3pm – 5pm) and Sundays (10am – 12 am and 3pm – 5pm) only. When we visited, parking our motorhome was not easy, but since then the museum got its own parking space, so that shouldn’t be an issue any longer.

In 2008 the baroque garden in front of the castle has been recreated and from the castle an English landscape park of 17ha with many old trees goes all the way to the banks of Schieder lake (Schiedersee).

After we had seen the old farm house in Lothe and went shopping in Steinheim we went for a walk through the old center of Schwalenberg. From driving through the village before we didn’t expect what we were about to see. As soon as you turn around the corner of the main street and enter the old part of town, the streets are lined up with old traditional truss houses from the 16th and 17th century. It almost felt like entering an open-air museum.

Usually such picturesque villages are being flooded with tourists and souvenir shops, but luckily that wasn’t the case with Schwalenberg.

Soon we found out why the camper park was so busy. It was the weekend of ‘SchiederSee in Flammen’ (Schieder lake in flames), a 3-day event with party, live music, flea market and fireworks above the lake. So it was noisy with loud music, busy and as we don’t like fireworks we were only going to stay for one night. At another time it might be a nice place but this wasn’t something we enjoy.

The former sawmill (mentioned first in 1358) and 37 ha land have been turned into a center for nature and environmental education with seminar rooms, kitchens, a workshop, a small cafe, theme and school gardens. We went to see the various gardens as we are thinking of creating a public garden ourselves one day.

Most of the gardens are located on the island between the millrace and the Werre river. The Umweltzentrum Heerser Mühle is open to the public between 7am and 8pm, free of charge.

Even though there is a camper park in Bad Salzuflen, which would give us a chance to see this spa town, we picked a camper park further away in Schieder, where we wanted to visit a paper mill museum.

The museum shows how bricks have been made throughout history. It was impressive to see how much work and energy it takes to create this common building material. Every first Sunday of a month one can enjoy a ride on a small railway (Feldbahn) that travels a route around the former clay-pit of the Beermann brickworks and on some days visitors are invited to turn clay into bricks by hand themselves.

When you drive through Bielefeld you don’t really think of gardens, but Bielefeld is not only situated beautifully in the Teutoburg Forest nature park, it also has some gardens which are worth a visit. To start with we went to the botanical garden. The botanical garden of Bielefeld is a municipal botanical garden of 4 hectares located on the hillside of the Kahler Berg near the town center and is open to the public for free.

The garden offers an extensive plant collections and a wide variety of landscaped gardens. Highlights are the traditional Westphalian farmhouse from the year 1823, the rhododendron and azalea displays, and the presentation of different natural settings such as rock gardens, alpine beds, medicinal and herb plantings, heather gardens and beech wood flora.

Next we went to the Japanese Garden, which was opened 2003. The Japanese garden in Bielefeld-Bethel is a traditional Japanese rock garden according to ‘Kare san sui’ principles.

Visitors experience the garden with their eyes only, they do not walk through this idealized representation of the natural world. Next to a series of photos we also created a short video of this special garden.

Japanese Garden Bielefeld from Harald Walker on Vimeo.