Excursions with children

Family outings on foot or by bike

Text last updated: 2024-03-22

Discover NRW: environmentally friendly excursion tips

Just get out and about: It's worth discovering North Rhine-Westphalia - at the weekend or during the vacations. The varied nature, fascinating sights and unusual places offer children and parents numerous opportunities to be active together. Attractive destinations can be found for every taste and age, which can be reached on foot, by bike or by bus and train.

Are you looking for suggestions for all-round successful excursions with your children without having to move the car? Here you can get tips on how to do it.

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Hiking in NRW - in the countryside or in the cities

Countless hiking trails wind through nature. But also many cities and their surrounding countryside invite to be discovered. The Internet offers an almost unmanageable amount of information. We put some of the offers exemplarily to your heart.

Discover NRW with children

The Discover NRW portal of the NRW Foundation for Nature Conservation, Heritage and Cultural Preservation takes you and your children to the most adventurous places in our country. Exciting background information, discovery tasks for children or craft instructions let the family trip already in advance playfully become something special.

The routes themselves will inspire your children and (perhaps) make them true fans of discovery and hiking. The tours usually start in the immediate vicinity of stops and train stations and are thus easy to reach by local transport.

Mobil.NRW encourages varied hiking tours: from primeval rocks in the Teutoburg Forest to historic castles on the Lower Rhine and hip street art in Cologne. The routes have been tested to meet the needs of families. All start and end points can be reached by bus and train, and rental bikes or e-scooters are also taken into account.

The free brochure "Discover NRW" from Mobil.NRW is available at the customer centers of transport companies, at tourist information offices or hiking clubs and at many tourist destinations in the state. Hiking fans can also find the relevant tours and information as an E-paper.

Hiking with children

The Hiking with children page of Tourismus NRW e. V. also has numerous tips for great excursion destinations and day trips. Whether adventure trails, hiking with animals or themed routes - adventurous experiences and variety are guaranteed. A digital travel guide with exciting audio guides is also part of the offer here.

Bike tours in NRW: family-friendly routes

Varied bike tours tailored to the needs and abilities of children get young and old going. Everywhere in NRW there are bike routes that are easy to master with children and are thus particularly suitable for family outings.

For example, former railroad lines and river bike paths offer low-slope cycling fun and many bike paths are full of adventure. For each taste there are suitable offers. The portal Biking with Kids of Tourismus NRW e. V. presents some of them.

Additional tips and advice

Online portals with hiking or cycling tour tips for parents with children usually contain useful tips on distances, duration or difficulty levels. Do not overtax your child and rather start slowly. Fun and enjoyment of the joint leisure activities should be in the foreground.

Do you like to plan your hike in NRW yourself? Then the hiking route planner should be just the right tool for your preparation.

The bike route planner NRW offers information and suggestions: From the Eifel to the Bergisches Land, the Lower Rhine, the Münsterland, Sauerland to the Teutoburger Land, cyclists:inside can put together tours themselves.

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Current traffic plans and tariffs of individual regions can be viewed at the links below.