Bad Windsheim: Upper Aisch Circuit

From the Bad Windsheim train station, you start immediately south and into the historic town centre, which was first mentioned in a document 1275 years ago. If you want to rent a bike, walk the first few minutes. From the station square, go straight down Johanniterstrasse and Pastoriusstrasse to the Tourist Information Centre on the market square.

Small tip: If you would prefer to ride an e-bike today, you can choose from 7-speed bicycles with four individually adjustable support levels at the spa and congress centre. To do this, you would have to go north once from the station in the direction of the Franken-Therme, which makes Bad Windsheim the only spa in Middle Franconia. The Tourist Information there rents out five of these e-bikes. You can book the bikes directly via the online shop.

The Tourist Information on the market square will inform you about Franconian nature and culture and the many leisure and sports facilities in and around Bad Windsheim. Here you also have the opportunity to rent one of six bicycles. They all have 7-speed gears and a coaster brake.

Continue south, once over the Aisch, and you have arrived at the Franconian Open-Air Museum.
A small note: unfortunately cycling is not possible on the museum grounds. However, there are covered bicycle parking spaces, lockers and charging stations for e-bikes.

On a tour of the Franconian Open Air Museum, you can discover with all your senses how people used to live and work in rural Franconia. The museum offers a journey through seven centuries of everyday history.

For this purpose, over a hundred buildings were moved to Bad Windsheim from their locations all over Franconia. Farms, barns and stables, craftsmen's houses, mills and shepherds' huts, breweries, bakery and drying huts, the official building and the schoolhouse, as well as the aristocratic castle - all these historical buildings are presented in six groups, arranged according to region and theme. The "Medieval Building Group", for example, is popular, while the "City Building Group" with the old building yard, the Church in Franconia Museum and the herbal pharmacy is the only one north of the Aisch River located in the old town of Bad Windsheim.

Regional specialities are served in the four restaurants - in good weather in their beer gardens. But museum guests can also buy them in the museum and enjoy them at the Erlebnisplatz on the large picnic meadow or at tables outside.

Your tour takes you further and further south. You cycle across open fields through a gently undulating landscape. You will cross or accompany one or the other stream and ditch and pass through the quiet little village of Urfersheim and later Marktbergel at the foot of the 500-metre Frankenhöhe. Have you noticed the meadow orchards? You will see them again and again in this region. Your next destination is the hedge labyrinth in Burgbernheim, further west.
Ripe for a refreshment? The small town of Burgbernheim is one of the 100 award-winning places of enjoyment in Bavaria. In its heart you will find the historic Gasthof "Zum Goldenen Hirschen", which serves upscale Franconian cuisine with meat and sausage products from its own slaughterhouse.

Gasthof "Zum goldenen Hirschen" (The Golden Deer)
Kornder family, Windsheimer Strasse 2, 91593 Burgbernheim
Tel: 09843/936880
info@gasthofhirschen.de, www.gasthofhirschen.de

Behind the mobile home site at the open-air swimming pool, the nature trail "Im Gründlein" awaits curious guests. A highlight of the nature trail is the hedge labyrinth, which was created in 2000. The 4000 hornbeams, now a good two metres high, prevent even adults from getting a good view. Only from the viewing platform in the middle of the labyrinth can you see where the entrances and exits are.

Now you continue first to the north and west. You pass a picturesque little lake on the outskirts of the town, later a quarry and reach the highest point of your tour between Mörlbach and Bergtshofen at an altitude of almost 400 metres. From there you head north-east via Pfaffenhofen and the interesting wine village of Ergersheim at the southern foothills of the Steigerwald Nature Park back to Bad Windsheim. Here you will have earned a quiet moment of enjoyment in the town's green oasis, the Kurpark, before your return journey.

The spa gardens in Bad Windsheim are over 110 years old. It was redesigned in the 1930s and extended again at the end of the 1960s. It is the largest listed spa park in Bavaria. Of the 36 hectares, 25.7 hectares are under special protection. A magnificent avenue of chestnut and lime trees, first laid out in 1730, runs through the park between green spaces and flower beds.

The spa park can be reached from the railway station via a footbridge. The view immediately opens onto the heart of the park with its floral greeting in the foreground, the water lily fountain and the historic half-timbered façade of the Dr. Becker Kiliani Clinic in the background.

The variety of offers in the green space includes the Kneipp Island with graduation house and water treading pool, a herb garden, a rose garden and a maze, the animal enclosure and the Georg Wilhelm Steller nature experience path. There is also an exercise park with various sports equipment and a mini-golf course.

The spa park is located directly at your starting and finishing point at Bad Windsheim railway station. But don't forget to return your rented bikes or e-bikes to the Tourist Information.