Bruchmühlen

The number-one visitor destination in these parts is probably the Museums-Eisenbahn Bruchhausen-Vilsen (five minutes’ drive), a train museum with numerous functioning steam engines, carriages and a short ride onboard a heritage train to Asendorf. If you’re after entertainment for the family, try Paintfreakz (10 minutes) for a spot of wildly competitive paintballing, or visit the peacocks, parrots and porcupines at the Tierpark Petermoor (20 minutes), where there’s also a petting farm for younger visitors. Now’s your chance if you’ve always wanted to walk with wolves and feed them; you can do just that at Wolfcenter GbR (25 minutes), where you can also watch birds of prey in flight displays. To get out and about in nature, Heiligenberg Nature Reserve (accessed from the site) has numerous waterside or woodland walks and cycle trails. For longer excursions, you can pedal it to the Hoya-Sulingen Geodätischer Punkt – the midpoint of Lower Saxony – in around half an hour.