The Böhme rises on the southwestern edge of the Lüneburg Heath Nature Park in the Pietzmoor. It flows mainly in a southwesterly direction through the district of Soltau-Fallingbostel losing 61 m in height. The Böhme leaves its source region southwest of the town of Schneverdingen and heads south, passing through the town of Soltau about later. It then runs close to the northwestern boundary of the Bergen-Hohne Training Area and through the centres of Dorfmark and Bad Fallingbostel. Above Walsrode it forms the Böhme Knee, which strikes out to the northwest, before finally swinging southwest to reach the Aller a little below the small village of Böhme between Ahlden and Rethem.
Descriptions
The Böhme is the westernmost of the large rivers in the Southern Heath or Südheide. Unlike the others, however, it flows through a relatively narrow valley in its middle reaches between Dorfmark and Walsrode, the highest points of which are the 40 m high bluffs of the Fallingbostel Lieth. It had already begun to attract tourists by the end of the 19th century and its popularity is reflected in local names such as the Honerdingen Switzerland - now unrecognisable due to sand quarrying - and Böhme Gorge. It initially formed a single landscape unit with the small ridge of the Falkenberg end moraine, the dolmens of the Sieben Steinhäuser and the old resort of Achterberg, today inside the Bergen-Hohne Training Area. Today it is still dominated by tourism, especially visitors to the Walsrode Bird Park and the grave of Hermann Löns in Walsrode, the largest town in the Böhme valley. This region, also called the Heidmark has a denser population than the surrounding area, partly because of the more fertile soils on the local loam heathland, but importantly due to early industrialization in Bomlitz. The upper reaches of the valley are broad and typical of the southern Lüneburg Heath. Here the Böhme rises from several old peat pits in the re-flooded Pietzmoor near Schneverdingen. The main settlement on the upper river is the road and railway hub of Soltau, a town of similar centrality as Walsrode and well known as a tourist destination because of the Heide Park north of the town. Below Walsrode the valley broadens suddenly into the Aller glacial valley with a densely wooded, sandy floodplain resembling an alluvial fan. The water quality is good being Class II: moderately polluted almost throughout.
The river gave its name to the proposed town of, which was to have been formed from the Bomlitz, Bad Fallingbostel and Walsrode in 2011, before the plans came to nothing.
