Qualla: Else (Werre)

Else (Werre): Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Rivers are supposed to start at a spring or a snowmelt or a marshy seep. The Else does not. It begins at a bifurcation - one of the rare points on Earth where a river splits and both branches survive, flowing to different seas. Near Gesmold, just outside the town of Melle in Lower Saxony, the river Hase loses about a third of its water to a channel that turns east instead of northwest. That channel is the Else. The Hase keeps going to the Ems and ultimately the North Sea. The Else flows east through the Ravensberg Hills into the Werre, into the Weser, and into a completely different watershed.

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Else (Werre): The Water Wars

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zefram, CC BY 2.0 de. A river bifurcation is geologically odd. Most channels merge; few divide and stay divided. The Else-Hase bifurcation may have begun as a natural phenomenon, or it may have been engineered, or it may simply have been maintained by human hands once it appeared - the historical reco...

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Image: Zefram | CC BY 2.0 de

Else (Werre): The Course Through Two States

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Arminia1, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the bifurcation in Melle, the Else flows roughly 35 kilometers east, crossing the state line from Lower Saxony into North Rhine-Westphalia at river kilometer 19.2. It passes through Rödinghausen and Bünde, slips under the A30 autobahn three times - at Gesmold, at Bruchmühle...

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Image: Arminia1 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Else (Werre): Else Meadows and a Kingfisher's Bank

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit TUBS, Public domain. Between Löhne and Osnabrück, where the railway line parallels the river, two adjacent nature reserves share the name Elseaue - 'Else water meadows' - covering 117 hectares of near-natural floodplain. They were designated in 1994 and 1995, threading a thin protected ribbon through...

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Image: TUBS | Public domain

Else (Werre): Cycling the Bifurcation

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eloise65, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Else-Werre cycle path follows the river from the bifurcation at Melle east through the towns along its banks, across the Werre at Kirchlengern, and on into the Weser - a route that retraces, in reverse, the path the water itself takes. Bünde has a canoe association and good f...

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Image: Eloise65 | CC BY-SA 4.0