Hainich

The Hainich is what Central Europe looked like before people got to work: broadleaf forest on a shell-limestone ridge, beech above wych elm, ash, and lime, standing and falling and rotting on its own schedule. The national park, declared on the last day of 1997, covers the southern half of the largest connected deciduous woodland left in Germany, and it owes that survival to soldiers — the Kindel training area kept the forest closed, unroaded, and unlogged for half a century, first for the Wehrmacht, then for Soviet troops. When the military left, the wilderness was simply already there; the park's slogan, "Urwald mitten in Deutschland", barely exaggerates.

In 2011 the Hainich's old growth entered the UNESCO World Heritage serial listing of Europe's ancient beech forests, its flagship German component. The forest floor is the spring spectacle: carpets of wood anemone, corydalis, and finally wild garlic that scent whole valleys in late April, all racing to flower before the canopy shuts the light off in May. This is also Germany's wildcat heartland — genuinely wild and genuinely invisible, though the Wildkatzendorf at Hütscheroda keeps ambassadors on view — along with fifteen species of bat and every woodpecker the country has to offer.

At Thiemsburg, the canopy walkway spirals up and runs more than half a kilometre through the crowns — the first of Germany's tree-top paths, and still the one with the most honest forest under it.

What's worth knowing before you go

Bad Langensalza is the practical gateway, with Mühlhausen and Eisenach (and the Wartburg) close behind; buses to the Thiemsburg centre and the trailheads are sparse outside summer weekends, so most visitors drive. Walks radiate from the Craulaer Kreuz and Thiemsburg; the Betteleichenweg to the hollow "beggar's oak" is the classic short loop.

Come in the last week of April for the wild-garlic bloom, or in hard winter, when hoarfrost turns the canopy walk into scrimshaw. The connoisseur's detour is Hütscheroda's viewing tower at dusk — the honest way to not see a wildcat, which is the authentic Hainich experience.