Hikes near Berlin: 9 S-Bahn routes from €4
Nine hikes near Berlin on a €4–€5 S-Bahn ticket: 8 to 18 km, distances and walking times from the operator, plus the last safe start time. Checked August 2026.
The nine hikes near Berlin below all start at an S-Bahn station and cost €4.00 on a Berlin AB ticket or €5.00 on ABC. They run from 8 km and 90 minutes to 18 km and five hours.
The short version
- Shortest walking time: the Lehnitzsee route, 8 km in about 90 minutes, S1 from Lehnitz to Oranienburg. The cheapest are the four that never leave Berlin, at €4.00.
- Best of the nine here: the Müggelsee route, 13 km from S Wilhelmshagen to S Friedrichshagen on the S3 — about 5.5 km of it close to the shore, and it stays inside Berlin, so a €4.00 AB ticket covers it.
- The one to skip if you are short on daylight: the 18 km Blankenfelde loop. It needs five hours, and by 30 September the sun sets at 18:46.
- The insider detail: S-Bahn Berlin publishes the distance, walking time, start station and line for every one of these routes on its own site.
- What it costs: €4.00 for the four routes inside the city, €5.00 for the five that cross into Brandenburg. The only extras are the Müggelturm (€6) and the Pfaueninsel ferry (€6, €5 reduced, island admission included).
How we checked: every distance, walking time and start station below comes from S-Bahn Berlin’s own route pages, and every fare from the VBB tariff valid 1 January 2026. Checked August 2026.
Contents
- All nine routes, in one table
- The last time you can start, by date
- The three under 10 km
- The three that run along water
- The two long ones
- What an ABC ticket actually covers
- What to bring in September
- How we chose these
- Questions people actually ask
All nine routes, in one table
Every row below is taken from the route page S-Bahn Berlin publishes for that walk. The distances and walking times are theirs, not ours, and not an estimate off a map.
| Route | Line | Start → end | Distance | Walking time | Shape | Ticket |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lehnitzsee | S1 | Lehnitz → Oranienburg | 8 km | 1.5 h | Point to point | ABC €5.00 |
| Briesetal | S1, S8 | Birkenwerder → Birkenwerder | 8 km | 2.5 h | Loop | ABC €5.00 |
| Nikolassee to the Grunewaldturm | S1, S7 | Nikolassee → Wannsee | 9 km | approx. 3 h | Point to point | AB €4.00 |
| Flakensee, from Erkner | S3 | Erkner → Erkner | 10 km | 3 h | Loop | ABC €5.00 |
| Bergfelde to Schönfließ | S8 | Bergfelde → Schönfließ | 10 km | approx. 2.5–3 h | Point to point | ABC €5.00 |
| Tegeler See and Tegeler Fließ | S1, S25, S85 | Tegel → Hermsdorf | 10.5 km | 3 h | Point to point | AB €4.00 |
| Müggelsee | S3 | Wilhelmshagen → Friedrichshagen | 13 km | approx. 3.5 h | Point to point | AB €4.00 |
| Havel and Pfaueninsel | S1, S7 | Wannsee → Glienicker Brücke | 14 km | approx. 5 h | One way, bus 316 back | AB €4.00 |
| Blankenfelde and the Rangsdorfer See | S2 | Blankenfelde → Blankenfelde | 18 km | approx. 5 h | Loop | ABC €5.00 |
Four of the nine stay inside Berlin’s city limits, which is what makes them a €4.00 day out rather than a €5.00 one. The other five cross into Brandenburg — still one ticket, still one train, just the ABC version.
The last time you can start, by date
Most guides skip this. Berlin loses about four minutes of daylight a day through September — the US Naval Observatory puts sunset in Berlin at 19:55 on 1 September and 18:46 on 30 September, and the day shortens from 13 hours 38 minutes to 11 hours 40 minutes over that month. A five-hour walk you could comfortably start after lunch in early September is a head-torch walk by the end of it.
Below is the latest you can leave the trailhead and still finish by sunset, worked out from the walking times in the table above and rounded down to the nearest five minutes, because no sunset table is worth trusting to the minute. Subtract another thirty minutes if you want light to spare, and remember that most of these routes end at a station, not at your front door.
| Walking time | 1 Sep (sunset 19:55) | 15 Sep (sunset 19:22) | 30 Sep (sunset 18:46) | 15 Oct (sunset 18:12) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5 h — Lehnitzsee | 18:25 | 17:50 | 17:15 | 16:40 |
| 2.5 h — Briesetal | 17:25 | 16:50 | 16:15 | 15:40 |
| 3 h — Grunewaldturm, Flakensee, Tegeler Fließ, Bergfelde | 16:55 | 16:20 | 15:45 | 15:10 |
| 3.5 h — Müggelsee | 16:25 | 15:50 | 15:15 | 14:40 |
| 5 h — Pfaueninsel, Blankenfelde | 14:55 | 14:20 | 13:45 | 13:10 |
The practical reading: from mid-October the two five-hour routes are a morning commitment or nothing. Everything at three hours and under still works as an afternoon.
Picked a route and a start time? That is the hard part done — the other half is having someone to walk it with. MITRA is for finding someone nearby who wants to do the same thing at the same time. Get MITRA on Google Play · Download on the App Store.
The three under 10 km
If you have never done one of these, start here. All three are three hours or under, and none of them require anything you do not already own.
Lehnitzsee — 8 km, 1.5 hours, S1
The shortest of the nine here: out at Lehnitz, along the lake, in at Oranienburg. Ninety minutes of walking means you can do it after work well into September, and Oranienburg is the end of the S1, so you cannot overshoot. The whole trip runs on one Berlin ABC ticket at €5.00 — Oranienburg’s own memorial site confirms ABC is the fare from central Berlin.
Briesetal — 8 km, 2.5 hours, S1 or S8
The one people describe when they say Brandenburg does not look like Brandenburg. The Briese is a small stream in a wooded valley north of Berlin, crossed on boardwalks, and the route starts and ends at S Birkenwerder, so there is no second station to find at dusk. It sits in the Naturpark Barnim, which runs to about 750 square kilometres, roughly 5.4% of it inside the Berlin districts of Pankow and Reinickendorf.
Eight kilometres in two and a half hours is a slow pace by design — the boardwalk sections are narrow and you will stop. If you would rather have company for a first one, our guide to finding a hiking partner in Berlin covers where people actually pair up.
Nikolassee to the Grunewaldturm — 9 km, about 3 hours, S1 or S7
The city one. Out at Nikolassee, through the Grunewald, finishing at S Wannsee. Nine kilometres, roughly three hours, and it never leaves fare zone B, so it is a €4.00 ticket. This is the route to pick when the forecast is uncertain: you are never more than a short walk from a station.
The three that run along water
Late August and early September is the last honest swimming window of the year in Berlin, and three of these hikes near Berlin keep you on a shoreline for a good part of the walk.
Müggelsee — 13 km, about 3.5 hours, S3
The best of the nine here, and still a €4.00 ticket because Wilhelmshagen and Friedrichshagen are both inside Berlin. Thirteen kilometres along the largest lake in the city, about 5.5 km of them close to the shore, ending in Friedrichshagen where there is somewhere to eat. The Müggelberge rise behind the southern shore — the Großer Müggelberg reaches 114.7 m — and the Müggelturm stands on the neighbouring Kleiner Müggelberg, a detour off this route rather than a stop on it. It charges €6 for adults and €3 reduced, and Berlin.de lists hours of 10:00 to 16:00, which is worth confirming before you plan a day around it.
If the swim is the point rather than the walk, our round-up of the best lakes in Berlin is the better starting place, and the outdoor pools guide covers what stays open once the lakes get cold.
Flakensee from Erkner — 10 km, 3 hours, S3
A ten-kilometre loop that starts and finishes at S Erkner, the eastern end of the S3. Because it is a loop you cannot miss the last train from somewhere unfamiliar — you walk back to where you arrived. Erkner is in Brandenburg, so ABC at €5.00.
Havel and Pfaueninsel — 14 km, about 5 hours, S1 or S7
Fourteen kilometres from S Wannsee along the Havel, finishing at the Glienicker Brücke — not a walked loop. The 316 bus runs from the bridge back to S Wannsee, so check its times before you set off, because this is the one route where the end of the walk is not a station. Five hours makes it a full day rather than an afternoon, but it stays in fare zone B the whole way, so the ticket is still €4.00. The ferry across to Pfaueninsel itself costs €6, or €5 reduced, with admission to the island included, and runs every 15 to 20 minutes. From late September this one has to start before two in the afternoon.
Nobody wants to do 14 km alone the first time. Walking with someone is what turns a route into a plan you actually keep — MITRA helps you find people nearby who want to do the same thing at the same time. Get MITRA on Google Play · Download on the App Store.
The two long ones
Two routes here need five hours, and they end very differently. Blankenfelde is a true loop: the station you arrived at is the station you leave from, so you are never rushing to reach a different one in the dark. The Pfaueninsel route is not — it finishes at the Glienicker Brücke and needs the 316 bus back to Wannsee, which is the one piece of timetable on this page you cannot afford to ignore.
Blankenfelde and the Rangsdorfer See — 18 km, about 5 hours, S2. The longest of the nine, a full loop from S Blankenfelde in Blankenfelde-Mahlow, a few kilometres south of the city boundary in the Teltow-Fläming district. The route takes in two village churches, a sixteenth-century smithy, the Gutspark Dahlewitz and a nature path along the Glasowbach, and takes in the Rangsdorfer See — beach on the eastern side, bird sanctuary on the western — before looping back to the station. ABC ticket, €5.00.
Havel and Pfaueninsel — 14 km, about 5 hours. Covered above. Shorter in distance, same time commitment, cheaper because it never leaves Berlin — and the only one of the nine that does not put you back at a station on foot.
What an ABC ticket actually covers
This is where most people overpay or, worse, underbuy. Berlin’s fare area has three rings. S-Bahn Berlin defines them plainly: zone A is the centre inside the S-Bahn ring, zone B runs from there to the city limits, and zone C covers the belt outside the city, including Potsdam. Tickets are only sold as AB or ABC — the old BC combination was dropped from 1 January 2026.
| Ticket | Price from 1 Jan 2026 | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Single, Berlin AB | €4.00 | Müggelsee, Grunewaldturm, Tegeler Fließ, Pfaueninsel |
| Single, Berlin ABC | €5.00 | Lehnitzsee, Briesetal, Erkner, Bergfelde, Blankenfelde |
| Short trip (Kurzstrecke) | €2.80 | Not these — it will not reach any trailhead |
| 24-hour ticket, AB | €11.20 | Only if you are making three or more journeys |
| 24-hour ticket, ABC | €12.90 | Same, for the Brandenburg routes |
| Deutschlandticket | €63.00 per month | All nine, plus every other regional train in Germany |
Two singles cost €8.00 on AB or €10.00 on ABC, so a day ticket only pays for itself if you are travelling somewhere else as well. If you already hold a Deutschlandticket, all nine of these are free at the point of use — which is the quiet argument for it if you are out this way more than six times a month.
What to bring in September
Nothing technical. These are flat sand-and-forest paths, not mountains: the highest ground anywhere near them, the Großer Müggelberg, reaches only 114.7 m, and no route here climbs it. What changes in September is light and water, not terrain.
- A phone with the return time already checked. The S1 to Oranienburg and the S3 to Erkner both thin out in the evening.
- More water than you think. The routes finishing in Oranienburg, Friedrichshagen and Erkner are the surest bets for buying some at the end; the wooded middle sections of the Briesetal and Blankenfelde loops have nothing at all.
- A layer. By 30 September the sun is down at 18:46 and the temperature drops with it.
- Shoes you would run in. Nothing here needs boots. The Briesetal boardwalks get slippery after rain, which is the only real hazard on the list.
- A rain plan. If it turns, the city routes are the ones you can abandon at a station — and our rainy day guide covers where to go instead.
Pick one route, pick a start time from the table, post it. That is the whole thing — MITRA is for the other half of a plan, finding someone nearby who wants to walk it at the same time as you. Get MITRA on Google Play · Download on the App Store.
How we chose these
We started from the excursion routes S-Bahn Berlin publishes on its own site — there are around thirty, each with a stated length, duration, start station and line — and applied two filters. First, the route had to be a country walk rather than a city stroll: woods, lakes, water or open land, not a tour of a neighbourhood’s architecture. Second, it had to be at least 8 km, long enough to be a day out rather than an errand. Nine came through. Every distance and walking time in the table above is the operator’s, not ours, which is the point: the numbers can be checked against somebody who is responsible for them, rather than against a stranger’s GPS track.
We cut one route that would otherwise have qualified: a Buch to Zepernick tour listed at about 20 km and about 3.5 hours. Twenty kilometres in three and a half hours is a running pace, not a walking one, so the two figures cannot both be right and we left it out rather than pass on a number we could not reconcile.
Fares come from the VBB tariff that took effect on 1 January 2026. Sunset times are the US Naval Observatory’s for Berlin, on the standard upper-limb-plus-refraction definition at sea level; the start times derived from them are rounded down to the nearest five minutes, because a flat sea-level horizon is not what you actually walk under. Nothing here is ranked by how pretty it is, because that is not a thing we can check — the ordering is by distance, shortest first.
Questions people actually ask
Are there any real hikes near Berlin, or is it all flat?
It is flat. The highest ground in the area these routes cover is the Großer Müggelberg at 114.7 m, and none of the nine goes over it. What they offer is distance and water rather than ascent — 8 to 18 km along lakes, streams and forest, with no climbing and no equipment needed.
Can you reach hiking trails from Berlin without a car?
Yes. All nine start at an S-Bahn station. Five walk from one station to another, three are loops back to the station you arrived at, and one — the Pfaueninsel route — ends at the Glienicker Brücke and takes the 316 bus back to S Wannsee. A single ticket costs €4.00 for the routes inside Berlin and €5.00 for those crossing into Brandenburg.
What ticket do I need to get to Brandenburg by S-Bahn?
A Berlin ABC single, €5.00 as of 1 January 2026. That covers zone C, the belt outside the city limits that includes Potsdam, Oranienburg, Erkner and Birkenwerder. Tickets are sold only as AB or ABC — the BC combination was discontinued on 1 January 2026.
Which is the easiest hike near Berlin for a beginner?
The Lehnitzsee route: 8 km in about 1.5 hours from S Lehnitz to S Oranienburg on the S1. It is the shortest walking time of the nine, it ends at the terminus of the line so you cannot overshoot, and it finishes in a town with shops and a station.
How late can I start a hike near Berlin in September?
Depends on the length. Sunset in Berlin falls from 19:55 on 1 September to 18:46 on 30 September, and the day itself shortens by about four minutes every day. A three-hour route can start at 16:55 on 1 September but must leave by 15:45 on 30 September. A five-hour route needs a 14:55 start at the beginning of the month and 13:45 at the end.
Can you swim on these routes?
Three keep you on a shoreline for a good part of the walk: the Müggelsee route along Berlin’s largest lake, the Flakensee loop from Erkner, and the Havel stretch out to Pfaueninsel. A fourth, the Blankenfelde loop, passes the Rangsdorfer See, which has a beach on its eastern side. Late August and early September is the last dependable swimming window of the year.
Is the Müggelturm worth the detour?
It costs €6 for adults and €3 reduced, it is 30 metres high and 126 steps, and Berlin.de lists opening hours of 10:00 to 16:00. Those hours are narrower than a full hiking day, so check before you build the walk around it rather than after.
Is a Deutschlandticket worth it just for hiking?
It costs €63 a month from 1 January 2026. A single ABC ticket is €5.00, so a return trip to a Brandenburg trailhead is €10.00. Purely for hiking it pays off at seven return trips a month: six returns cost €60, still less than the ticket. For most people it only makes sense alongside regular commuting.
If you would rather ride than walk, the same one-way-out logic applies to Berlin’s signed cycle routes — with the difference that the bike needs a ticket of its own.
Want to keep reading?
- How to find a hiking partner in Berlin
- The best lakes in Berlin, by S-Bahn
- Best picnic spots in Berlin
- Things to do alone in Berlin
- Outdoor pools in Berlin
- Rainy day activities in Berlin
One route, one Saturday
The reason most people in Berlin never walk any of these is not fitness and it is not money — it is that eight kilometres alone on a Saturday is a slightly bleak proposition, so the plan quietly does not happen. The routes are already published, with distances and times, on the S-Bahn’s own website. The distances are short. The ticket is four euros.
Pick the Lehnitzsee if you have ninety minutes, the Müggelsee if you have an afternoon, and check the daylight table before you pick either of the five-hour ones. Then find someone to go with, which is the only part of this that is genuinely hard.
Nine routes, one ticket, and the only missing piece is company. MITRA helps you meet people nearby who want to do the same thing at the same time — Berlin first, other EU cities on the roadmap. Get MITRA on Google Play · Download on the App Store.
Sources
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