Skip to main content

A Family Hike in the 'Lochbachklamm' (Hesse)

About a week ago, we went on another adventure exploring Germany and stayed in a tiny village in Hesse (central Germany). Else's mom had planned this trip as a family vacation for Else's siblings, their partners, and Else's nephews. Not far from our vacation home was the 'Lochbachklamm,' a small valley with fourteen wooden bridges. The valley was part of a shortish hiking trail of about 8.5 kilometers and our host strongly recommended it.

The next day after breakfast, we started out to find the bridges. It wasn't easy to combine the interests and abilities of eight adults and three children. One of Else's sisters and her partner were taking selfies (or asked others to take pictures) all the time. Her brother wanted to get on and was annoyed about all the breaks. Her other sister and her husband are not accustomed to physical exercise and insisted that we shouldn't walk the entire trail and should just go to see the bridges.

As soon as we left our vacation home, we found the first trail marker. That seemed easy! We kept following the markers, turned left at a crossing where the marker told us to turn left. We walked on peaceful forest tracks, never meeting a single person (first warning sign). At some point, Ilse spotted the wooden bridges. On a parallel track, about twenty meters below us, no track leading there (second warning sign). We mused: this is a loop hike. So maybe this is how it's supposed to be? We did notice, though, that we hadn't seen any trail markers since we followed the one at the crossing ...

At some point, we decided that we should probably turn back or find a way to get down. And we did find a 'way' down. We weren't sure if we could actually walk it, so the both of us went 'scouting,' leaving the others behind. When we were sure (surish ...) that we could make something of this, we called the others and they followed. A few meters before reaching us, a scream: "snake!" The 'snake' turned out to be a slowworm, a lizard, but it was exciting!

After twenty minutes or so, we finally reached the first of the fourteen bridges. What a relief! And the valley was incredibly beautiful as well. At times, it reminded us of movies, of scenes in The Lord of the Rings. Here, we saw many people—too many to feel comfortable during a global pandemic. But that shouldn't have surprised us.

After we reached the wooden bridges, almost everyone enjoyed the rest of our hike. The scenery was incredibly beautiful, the bridges added a romantic atmosphere, and the children enjoyed running around. Just Else's sister and her husband seemed exhausted and couldn't wait to get back to our vacation home. But still: we had a wonderful day in the woods and the two of us would love to try this trail again—we found the right trail markers on our way back.
Labels:
Location: Knüllstraße, 34593 Knüllwald, Germany

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cochem: A Few Days in the German Countryside

Cochem is a place in the German countryside, in Rhineland-Palatinate. Although it is a district seat, it is rather small with about 5,000 inhabitants. Although it is probably easiest to arrive by car, traveling by rail is convenient as well. And as you know: we will always prefer to travel sustainably! We had booked a vacation home with a surprisingly comfortable Murphy bed (our first time in a Murphy bed!) and a little kitchen. Although Cochem had almost no COVID-19 cases when we visited, we nevertheless wanted to be careful and a place where we could make our own food was a perfect solution. But although it rained a lot, we luckily could enjoy a few patios. Cochem lies at the Moselle and is part of the Mosel wine region. The Mosel wines are amongst the best (if not the best) wines in Germany and the local/regional wines in Cochem were delicious. Since Cochem is a popular town for tourists and day visitors, there were lots of restaurants. But this popularity also meant that prices wer...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Intersectional Feminism Is Important to Us

As white persons born and raised in a Western European country, we are very privileged —more than most people in the world . But, at the same time, we are women and we are lesbians. We are from non-academic working/middle class blended families. We are not skinny. Still, we count ourselves lucky. We know that so many people struggle. Struggle with discrimination in so many ways, on so many levels. And we believe that society/societies should acknowledge these struggles. All of them are valid. Some struggle more, others less. Maybe, some people don't struggle at all. But we never know how severe a struggle is felt that we would disregard. We believe that it is important to share experiences of discrimination, that it is important to make these visible. Perpetrators should not be protected. Perpetrators should be called out. It should be normal to call them out. Both of us have experienced discrimination as a woman, as a lesbian, as a child from a non-academic working/middle...
Post a Comment
Read more

Are you friends?

Yes! Of course we are friends. We are even best friends. We know almost everything about each other. We spend more time with each other than anyone else. We enjoy each other’s company. We talk for hours, we laugh about the most stupid jokes (and some good ones as well). We can be who we really are—in the joyful moments as well as in the sad or stressed ones. We live together.  But we are so much more than what you are assuming. We also sleep in the same bed. We love each other—not platonically, but romantically. We share more with each other than we would with friends—however close we are with them. When we are holding hands, we don’t do so as friends, but as partners and lovers. And we certainly don’t kiss each other as friends. So while we would appreciate when people would accept displays of affection as natural and shareable with everyone, this is probably not the reason why people think that we are not a couple. Presenting as rather femme, we are too easily mistaken as heteros...
Post a Comment
Read more