Luxembourg Hiking: Part 1

Hiking often conjures up a lot of romantic notions – getting back to nature, immersing yourself in the outdoors, blah blah blah – but if you look up the term in a dictionary, it should really describe hiking as “walking a freaking long way carrying a pile of stuff on your back, which encourages old injuries/ailments to resurface to accompany your newly sore feet, legs and shoulders”. In spite of knowing this, we decided it would still be a good idea to see Luxembourg, since the country is small, the landscape supposedly spectacular, and there are well-defined trails linking a network of excellent youth hostels. So after leaving the majority of our luggage at the Luxembourg City youth hostel (finally, a hostel with free lockers large enough to actually fit a backpack!), we hopped on a bus to Echternach where we planned to start our 4 day hike through the Mullerthal region.

Day 1: Echternach to Beaufort

Echternach is small historical city very close to the German border – in fact, we’re pretty sure the land across the river on the edge of town was Germany! The hostel was located on the edge of a lake area bordered by pine forested-hills – a kick-ass location even if it was just a bit far from the rest of town (about 3km walk). Our first days’ hike started by heading straight up a hill overlooking the town, and then headed down (and then up, and down again… you get the idea) through forest and some spectacular rock formations. This section seemed to be a popular section for day hikers – we crossed paths with a lot of people on circuit trails heading to/from nearby car parks.

Everything was going along smoothly… until the trail markings stopped matching up with anything we had on our map – you know you’re up the creek when you get to a 5-way trail intersection, and not one of the signs points to anywhere you’re expecting. Anyway, so we followed what we thought was the right trail according to our map, but about an hour after we’d expected to hit the bridge (and most importantly, stop for lunch), we were still on a trail that seemed never-ending. At this point we were about ready to chuck the map on the ground, stamp on it a few times for good measure, and flag down the next bus we saw. Eventually we stopped, figured out where we probably were, and after spotting a section of road below that we could pinpoint on the map, we did a bit of scrambling straight down a hill, walked along the road for a bit, and finally, there was the bridge (and the home trail to Beaufort shortly after).

Day 2: Beaufort to Larochette

We were the only people staying in the Beaufort youth hostel, so we absolutely destroyed the breakfast buffet. After the previous days’ unplanned detour, we were careful to double check our trail map against the hostel’s before heading out on the trail. This trail section is dubbed “Little Switzerland”, and very quickly the terrain changed to rolling green fields and meadows (though strangely devoid of livestock), interspersed with pine and open forest. The trail was relatively easy going, and we ended up rolling into Larochette around lunchtime. Larochette was another small town nestled in a valley with a creek flowing through the centre, and a grand castle perched atop a rocky hillside over the town. Check-in at the hostel wasn’t until 5pm, so we grabbed some beer and chips from the supermarket (4 Euro for 6 beers, thanks very much!) and sat in the shade by the creek watching the cars drive by and loving Europe’s lack of public drinking laws.