Swalmen to Venlo

For those of you wondering, yes, we did make it on time for the BBQ. But we didn’t have much time to spare, so the decision to start in Swalmen instead of Roermond did pay off.

The leg

Since this wasn’t an actual continuation of the Sittard to Roermond leg, we started from the train station which was very remote. Walking from the train station towards the start of the leg took us through some beautiful old streets towards a nice small park.

After a kilometer we quickly arrived in the forest, where we sat down and grabbed something to eat. The weird part was, that when we where sitting there all the people who were walking saw us, and quickly turned around. As if they were afraid to pass us, even though we were next to the trail (and not looking extremely scary if I say so myself). But after the lunch, we went on to start the actual trail.

Swalmen to Germany

As you can see in the trail layout above, the trail goes through a very big forest area crossing the border into Germany.

The hike was very nice, walking through the forest really gave the feeling that we weren’t anywhere near the civilized world at all. Because we didn’t have a clue as to where we were, I decided to look on Google Maps and noticed that we were walking right on the border with Germany, and that’s also were we saw some remains from World War II. There was a sign stating that the area we were walking in had a lot of anti-tank bunkers, and we saw some concrete stones, but we weren’t able to find the actual bunkers. I’d love to have gone inside one to see what it would look like.

Germany to Venlo

Walking through the forest while still looking out to see if there were any bunkers, we had to keep looking in Komoot to view the actual trail. Since we lost the signs that were supposed to lead us through the Pieterpad. At first, we thought that we were so distracted by looking for bunkers that we must have missed them.

But, we found various other hikers, also walking the Pieterpad, who asked us if we knew how the route was supposed to go. Fair to say, we weren’t the only ones who were lost.

Arriving in the nature area around Venlo we found a very cool looking wooden cabin, made as a small resting place for hikers. Even though I live near this place four several years, I never knew that it was there, that was a nice surprise.

The end of the section brought us through het Jammerdaal, which is a nature reserve where we’ve hiked before. So that was a nice ending.