Wildcamping on a wooden platform in the Eifel
If you live in Europe, you will be familiar with the struggle that wild camping is not allowed in most countries. Due to its high population density and spare nature, most countries have banned wild camping making you dependent on sleeping at campings. While this suffices often, sometimes you just want to get out there and be the only one in the forest. Just you, your tent and some freeze dried meal. We discoverd the opportunity to do just this in the Eifel region in Germany.
Hohes Venn Nature Park
In the Eifel region, there is the Hohes Venn Nature Park. A beautiful nature reserve with wonderful forest and small rivers. Here they made it possible to trek trough nature, reaching camping spots that are only available to hikers. How it works? Hidden throughout the park, there are 17 natural campsites. These consist of a wooden platform to pitch your tent on and a composting toilet closeby. Sites have to be booked to get access to the specific coordinates you’ll have to navigate to. Each site has space for two tents, but it is possible to book the whole site just for yourself. A spot will cost you 10 euros a night.
Our mini wildcamping trip
In april 2023, we booked a campsite for just ourselves and set off to Germany. It would become our first time camping outside of a camping with facilities. After triple-checking our gear, making sure we brought enough food and had plenty of water we set off on a beautiful hike through the park. Since we went quite early in the season, it was still quiet on the trails.
At the end of the afternoon, we arrived at our campsite, which was a small climb up from the trail. After some struggles with setting up a tent on a wooden platform (where you cannot use stakes), we got camp set up. And look at that view! The location even came equipped with its own picnic table, making it a great relaxing spot. We immensly enjoyed the peace and quiet and saw no other people at all during our stay.
We woke the next morning to a lot of rain and fog. After eating breakfast in the tent, packing up, and using the handy composting toilet nearby we got going again. Winding our way back to the car and a well deserved meal!
Tips for booking the platforms
If you feel inspired by our experience and want to book one of the campsite as well, take a look at https://www.trekking-eifel.de/de/. Beware that the campsites fill up fast, especially on weekends and during the holidays. We chose to book the whole platform for ourselves and found that our single tent filled it quite a lot. If booking only half, keep in mind that someone else might show up and have right to one half of the space. The information on the location gets sent to you by mail and went smoothly in our case. Happy trails!
