First Trail Completed

We are already finished with the first trail; Heideschnuckenweg. It has been a great trail to start with, with a lot of forest and heath land. Heide is also a purple herb that grows along this trail and on big fields, we have been told that this trail is much nicer in the summer when this special plant bloom. So if you have the opportunity this summer maybe this is where you want to go!

This trail has taken us through a lot of small towns and we like to be more outside of the towns. Sometimes we have been compromising and chosen another trail that ended up in the same place just so we could skip going into some towns. The trail also moves along some military training areas and these areas you are not allowed to trespass. If you do and they find you, you have to deal with the consequences of a big fine.

The last piece of the trail, between Hermansburg and Celle, we could not find one single camping site. So we took the train to Celle since we can’t afford spending our money on hotels. Celle is a really beautiful town with really old houses with cool finishes. We had planned to stay here for 2 nights so we could explore the town of Celle, but sadly the camping site didn’t allow pets on their premises. So we decided to take the train directly to Porta Westfalica where our next trail begins.

Along Heideschnuckenweg we’ve seen some pretty cool stuff. One camping we stayed at is a 5 star camping site with 3-4 restaurants, bars and bathing houses. It even had a spa area, it’s supposed to be the best camping site in Europe. We also made a new friend, a bartender at one of the restaurants. We sat down together after his shift and had a really good time. Südsee Camp.

And only some days after this we had bad luck with a camping site who were closed and didn’t let us set up camp, so a nice family took us in for the night. They gave us food and a soft bed to sleep in, we are very grateful for our new friends.

After helping a camp owner starting a camp fire and doing some other work we believe we might be able to work for camping sites in the high season to get a free tent spot. This camp owner told us that it was a good idea.

Now to the more important stuff; hiking and collecting trash. On this trail we’ve managed to get 22 full bags of trash, since most of the trail leads through nature areas we think this is a good portion. We can always hope it will decrease. We’ve noticed that with our big backpacks it takes almost the double time to walk from point A to point B. It gets even worse when walking by areas with a lot of trash because it takes time to get it all. So if you are out on a trail like this you have to plan ahead and maybe settle with smaller goals and don’t push too far.

Speaking of pushing too far, we’ve overdone it a couple of times. When you push yourself to the limit once and have a nice sunny day while doing it, it can be manageable. But when you’re still on foot when the sun is down and the rain starts pouring you realize the mistake.

Eating correctly and stretching your muscles can make your hike more comfortable. We eat three big meals per day and tons of snacks in between. Everything from chocolate bars, power bars and “Dextrose”, but we prefer smoked beer sausage. In the evenings we often put “Resorb” (rehydration) in our water to recover better during the night for our next day of walking.

Now we’re really excited to walk our next trail; Weserbergland-weg. The surroundings look amazing and the trail seems very promising!

Auf Wiedersehen!