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Just minutes on the road from Velbert, the city of Wuppertal has always been one of Germany’s manufacturing powerhouses.

The Wupper River Valley became a hive of industry in the 1700s and 1800s and this gave the city some of big attractions.

The best of these is the Wuppertal Suspension Railway, which looks like no other mass transit system in the world.

You can’t come without one ride on the world’s oldest elevated electric railway, which feels both futuristic and from a bygone age thanks to its hulking steel frame and Art Nouveau stations.

You journey through 400 million years of the earth’s history at this former mining tunnel in Wülfrath.

The 160-metre passage was excavated for the Bochumer Bruch limestone quarry, which was mined until 1958. Recently the tunnel has been repurposed as a museum, with information panels interspersed by fossil-riddled limestone, proof that this whole region was underwater 400 million years ago.

Every few steps you’ll be in another geologic period, starting with the Devonian, and moving through Carboniferous, Permian, Jurassic, Cretaceous and Quaternary.

You’ll see the creatures and plants that flourished in each period, and a visit culminates with the view from a platform 70 metres up the quarry’s man-made cliffs.

At the foot of the Bismarckturm, Hordtberg also has a high ropes centre.

At Wald Abenteur (Forest Adventure) obstacle courses are lifted above the forest floor.

There are 100 different challenges to take on, like zip-lines, swaying rope bridges, rope nets and Tarzan-styles wings.

Kids as young as four can put on a hard hat and harness and take part.

And children aged nine and up will be big enough to attempt the grown-up adventure trail, while 12 year olds will be ready for the Xtreme trail, which has the toughest challenges.

In the very heart of Velbert, the Forum Niederberg is a mixed-use centre and cultural heartbeat for the city.

It was designed by the architects Behrendt and von Chamier, and despite being almost four decades old still feels ahead of its time.

As well as containing the lock museum, this building also hosts Velbert’s library and its 704-seater theatre, which closed in 2015 and was being reconfigured as a cinema when this post was written.

The enduring symbol for Langenberg came about thanks to the philanthropy of the industrial era.

Bürgerhaus Langenberg is a community centre gifted to the town in the 1910s by the weaving magnates Adalbert and Sophie Colsman.

According to their wishes the cavernous Art Nouveau building was to be used freely by the residents for concerts, festivals, meetings, clubs and associations.

A century later the Bürgerhaus remains the soul of the community, and has a gym, kitchen, beer cellar and large and small halls.

The centre is better than ever, having recently come through a decade-long renovation.

And if there’s a public gathering, concert, theatre production or art exhibition happening in Langenberg you can bet that it will happen at this elegant venue.

n Neviges after checking out the Wallfahrtsdom you could amble up to the highest and oldest part of the town.

Although small, the historical core of Neviges is exceptionally pretty.

Here there’s a ring of half-timbered and slate-clad houses radiating from the Stadtkirche.

That monument at the centre was consecrated in 1317, and its Gothic choir is still intact.

The Baroque nave came later, in 1740, and a lot of the decoration dates to that century, like the Rococo pulpit and the organ case.

The Art Nouveau architect Carl Krieger and artist Franz Brantzky collaborated on Velbert’s main church, which was inaugurated in 1910 after two years of construction.

Velbert’s main park has the kind of facilities you’d expect to find at a paid attraction.

First off, there’s an animal park with tame domestic animals like chickens, donkeys, Shetland ponies, sheep and goats, many of which children can touch and feed.

The space allocated for kids’ playgrounds adds up to more than 6,000 square metres, all imaginatively designed and well maintained.

The park also has a 1.2-kilometre “Kükelhaus trail”. This is named after the pedagogue Hugo Kükelhaus and has 11 ingenious stations with games that adhere to his principles of sensorial development.

For example, kids can use a hand crank to create a whirlpool, or play with echoes, light refraction and optical illusions.

One of the oldest sights in the municipality is this moated castle, first mentioned in 1354. The property was highly coveted by noble families for hundreds of years and changed hands many times.

The castle’s standout feature is its 17th-century casemates, galleries with shooting positions that were built into the ramparts to respond to artillery attacks.

There are also four stocky artillery towers at each corner, with conical slate roofs.

In 2017 the castle and its casemate were being renovated, but you could still come for the bistro, which has outdoor seating in the castle courtyard.

The grounds beside the moat are gorgeous, and there’s a mini golf course if you’re visiting with kids.

To get out into the high countryside your best option would be Hordtberg, a 244-metre hill in Langenberg.

This is the highest point for several kilometres and so has long been chosen for transmitters.

There are two towers on the hill today: In the lower reaches is a 170-metre medium wave mast, while on the hill top is an immense 300-metre mast for TV, FM and also medium wave signals.

These are received across North Rhine-Westphalia, and as far as the Netherlands and Belgium.