A weekend in the Eifel National Park

One of the things that I like the most about where we live at the moment, is that it gives us so much flexibility. Being able to travel 20 minutes  with a tram and be directly in downtown, and then traveling in the other direction with a train for 1-2 hours and ending up in the middle of nowhere. 

There is so much to do within an accessible radius, it doesn't get much better than that!

Last weekend, we decided to go to the Eifel National Park to camp and hike. So we packed our tent and our backpacks and hopped on a train Saturday morning. From Cologne to Düren, and from there we took another train to Heimbach, a picturesque little town that sits at the base of the national park. (see photo below)

 

We found a nice little campsite, and for 10.50 for the both of us and out little tent, doesn't get much more cost effective than that. About 200m from the campsite is a direct trail into the national park. Luckily for us, we didn't figure that out until the 2nd day... (insert sarcastic eye rolling here!) The first day after we pitched our tent, we set off, in the "wrong direction", thinking just go uphill. I make it sound like it was so bad, but it wasn't. We ended up taking a long route to another entrance to the national park, the problem was it was near to a resort, with a lot of people, cars, and not so much nature. I got pretty frustrated at one point, because I wanted to get "away from it all", but here I was standing next to a huge resort... 

Anyways, we finally ended up finding what we were looking for, the tranquility that only being in nature can bring.  

Our little tent on the left. 

We finally found the trails, and it was perfect. Beautiful trees, water, views, animals, and near complete silence aside from the sounds of nature: running water, birds chirping, crickets/bugs buzzing.

 When we made it to the top of the mountain, we were rewarded with this view.


By the end of the weekend we had walked about 30km, or 18 miles or so. What I liked most, was that some of the paths were very well developed, while other parts were not so developed, making it difficult to figure where to go next, which also made it really fun to navigate.

I felt completely reinvigorated and exhausted, it was just what I needed to recover from too much time in the city. I would love to go back and check out some of the other trails that they have at some point. It is definitely worth a visit if you have a day or two to spare.