Adelheidsdorf: Peat and horses - Cycle path through cultural landscape

The 20 km long bicycle tour gives an impressive insight into the former moorland, where settlement dates back only about 200 years.  Ditches and canals remind of the history of reclamation. The fields and meadows created at that time are now mainly used to grow feed for horses, which can often be seen along the roadside.

Großmoor is the starting and finishing point of the circular route "Adelheidsdorf". A young village, in which settlement only began in 1914, awaits you. Its history is closely linked to the moor administration, which controlled the peat cutting as well as the cultivation and settlement of the area. One of their three identical administrative buildings from that time is located right next door, it houses the kindergarten today. 

The village store, founded in 2014 by citizens of Adelheidsdorf, is a lively shopping and meeting place in Großmoor. Also, a farm store with regional products and the village community center with barbecue area invite you to visit and take a break.

One of the first stops on the cycle path is the hand peat cutting on Kurfürstendamm. Until the 1960s, the inhabitants of the region obtained their heating material in the form of peat bales from the moor. The excavated area in the middle of a small forest explains the history of peat extraction through information boards and exhibits. 

Get to know the exhausting work of peat cutting and learn how the land was then made usable as arable land and meadows. The conditions under which peat bogs could develop and how the change from mining to the protection of this permanently damp treeless landscape took place are also illustrated.