Hike through Siebenmühlental

Echterdinger Straße – Siebenmühlental – Schlößlesmühle – Burkhardtsmühle – Waldenbuch

The starting point for this hike is once again our hiking information board at the bus stop "Postamt Waldenbuch", which gives us an overview of the entire route. We bear right along Stuttgarter Straße for a short distance, cross the road somewhere near the filling station and past it on our right. We are now in Tübinger Straße, which we follow as far as the next crossroads. Opposite we see the old Gasthaus Krone (Crown Inn), where a table top with carvings can still be seen, a relic from the days when the inn was popular with students. We turn the corner and head for the old cemetery (Friedhof). The hiking sign with the blue stripe is now our guide. Three atonement crosses are set into the wall, with another cross on top of it. It's worth taking a look at the cemetery, where there are interesting gravestones, some dating back as far as the 16th century. Continuing up the long hill of the Lange Steige, we come on our left to a flight of 124 steps, which we have to climb. On reaching the top we turn left along Oskar-Schwenk-Straße (Oskar Schwenk, 1892 - 1963, factory owner and freeman of the town, patron of Waldenbuch's School Centre) to the end of the road. We proceed upward on the left-hand side of Echterdinger Straße, where the blue stripe hiking sign guides us past the stadium and uphill to the edge of the forest. After passing the bus stop "Hasenhof" we switch to the other side of the road and enter the forest, where a broad road, the former "Schweizer Straße" leads downwards, right into the beautiful Siebenmühlental (Seven Mill Valley).

Schweizer Straße:
This used to be the old trade route that was also used by the post coach from Stuttgart via Echterdingen, Waldenbuch and Tübingen into Switzerland. Many a famous personage travelled along it: Schiller (1793), Goethe (1797) and Uhland (1810), to name but a few.
 
After 1.5 km an asphalt cycle/hiking track joins the road from the left – a former railway embankment, which saw its last train in 1955. Today it is a cycle/hiking trail and part of the Federal Hiking Trail network.

We now have 2 options:

We can turn right here and walk along the asphalt road (no signposting) as far as the Burkhardtsmühle mill. On the left of this charming valley we see the Walzenmühle, Kochenmühle, Upper and Lower Kleinmichelesmühle and Burkhardtsmühle mills, none of them still in operation. We keep to this path, which takes us along a broad, right-hand curve over a bridge to the other side of the Aich Valley and past the Bachenmühle, the community of Glashütte and back to Waldenbuch via Bahnhofstraße and Neuer Weg, 

or:

we can go straight on for another 15 minutes, where there is a hiking trail leading to the right with the hiking sign of a red cross. We join a pleasant path running some way below and parallel to the cycle/hiking trail. It ends a little later and the trail continues on the other side of the cycle/hiking path until it turns down the hill leading to the Kochenmühle mill. Crossing its grounds we arrive at a surfaced agricultural road on the far side of the Reichenbach stream with the red cross hiking sign, which we follow downstream. Directly after passing the Obere (Upper) Kleinmichelesmühle we reach the Untere (Lower) Kleinmichelesmühle through the grounds of a wood processing plant. At the Burkhardtsmühle we mount several steps on our right and arrive once more on the cycle/hiking trail, which leads us over a bridge in a wide, right-hand curve to the other side of the Aich Valley, then past the Bachenmühle, the district of Glashütte and back to Waldenbuch via Bahnhofstraße and Neuer Weg.
 
This hike was devised by Walter Nogger (a guide with the Schwäbischer Albverein e.V., Waldenbuch branch.

Recommended hiking map

Topographic map "Stuttgart“, page 12, scale 1:35.000, published by: Landesamt für Geoinformationen.