This year’s holiday was actually a compromise. But a fantastic one. After we had planned several other holiday destinations almost completely, our plans were crossed every time. And when my car was stolen and used for a burglary just before the holiday, the motto for this year was: cheap holiday in Germany – hiking and camping.
The Heidschnuckenweg was voted the most beautiful hiking trail in Germany in 2014 and it is intended to be hiked in two weeks. We had three weeks time. So after some planning around we decided to hike from Celle to the outskirts of Hamburg, spend a few days with friends there, drive out of Hamburg and hike the last days to Lübeck. We are not necessarily hiking pros or insanely athletic, but the adventure was still exciting.
Now we still needed the appropriate equipment. We already had most of it, but we got some in the local Globetrotter, that we visited more than once. One week before the trip, when we had everything together (at least that’s what we thought), we wanted to do a test packing day and also a walk with the luggage to test if everything fits and if we might need something else. Eventually the test packing lasted from 12 noon to 12 o’clock at night. During the first packing attempt both backpacks were clearly overloaded with about 25 kg. That of course meant that we had to leave even more at home than we had anticipated.
The hours went by and our bagpacks were repacked and stuff was sorted out again and again. In the end we put every single piece on the kitchen scale to identify the cause of the weight. As a result, the following week we went back to the Globetrotter to get extra-light containers and refill anything that was too big or in a container that was too heavy. This way we could save some hundred grams. Everywhere we saved weight and only took the most necessary things with us. This went so far that I soldered a cable short, because I could save another 50 grams. In the end my backpack weighed 18 kg and Maraike’s weighed 16 kg. But without the 3 liters of water in our water bladders…
In advance we planned the whole route with Google MyMaps, where we uploaded the hiking routes and could see how we have to tackle the individual sections logistically. That is: Accommodation (campground or hotel), food (for some sections we had to buy food for three days before, because there was simply nothing on the route), length of the daily route, etc. With all this preparation and a lot of enthusiasm we set out for an experience we hadn’t had yet in this form.
In the following now a loose arrangement of stories about what happened to us during the days of the hike.
