What is your idea of easy hiking
Hiking in Germany Hiking and Riesling in the Palatinate There are certainly regions in Germany with a higher profile than the Palatinate – even the natives of this part of southwestern Germany would probably accept that without objections. The Palatinate’s problem is that it is a little “stashed away” at some distance from the busy transport…
Day Hiking in Germany A Coal Mine Called Nightingale Nightingale or Nachtigall Colliery (“Zeche Nachtigall“) at the foot of the Muttental trail prides itself on being the “cradle of coal mining” in West Germany. Coal was actually dug out of the surrounding hillsides as long as 300 years ago, and in 1839, at the very…
Easy hiking in Germany Meet the Lake District of the Ruhr A few weeks ago, we travelled all the way to the Mecklenburger Seenplatte in Germany’s “Far East” to experience a near-Scandinavian blend of beauty and bleakness. This week, we discovered that we could have had all of that much closer to “home”. Well, nearly…
Hikes near Paris It was just after our picnic lunch on the Carrefour de Denecourt when Mrs. Easy Hiker started to sing the praises of hiking in the Ile de France, thanking the Hiking Gods for making all local trails so conveniently flat. She hadn’t quite finished her sentence when we went on a steep…
Hiking Trails near Paris Hiking the Marais of Misery You may have heard about Paris, Texas. Today, I will take you a little further east, into the swampy lowlands of the Essonne river, straight into the bayous of Paris, Louisiana. But first, we have to take the train into the Deep South of the Ile…
Hiking in Germany The Coalminers Trail There are two things you should know about the Muttental Mining Trail, east of the Ruhrgebiet, Germany’s old industrial heartland: Firstly, for nearly all of the trail’s 9 km, you would never think that you are in the middle of what is essentially a city of 7 or 8…
Hiking trails near Paris Confession time for a hiking blogger What I normally do after our hikes is this: I sit down, on the very same evening, to write down a few lines for later reference, so I will remember what happened when we eventually want to publish the post – which may be weeks,…
Hiking trails near Paris Discover Hiking Rural France It never fails to amaze me how profonde – how deeply, relentlessly rural – France can be as little as one hour away from Paris. Today’s walk – which features some pretty and prosperous farms, some new, some hundreds of years old – could serve as a…
Hiking near Paris The Parisian Banlieue – a term covering anything from just outside of the city limits to villages and small towns a one-hour railway journey away – has a bad reputation, not all of it undeserved. But for every town over which a pallor of tristesse – actually, the bitterness of exile –…
Hiking in Barcelona Atop Montjuic Whereas the sea, all over the world, is made of one piece, mountains are nature’s true individuals. You have to meet them in person to properly know or even get a first meaningful impression of them. Statistical information of whatever sort or content is of no assistance here and can, at…