Müllerthal

This morning we were up bright and early not with the birds but with the Bin men emptying the bins at our little aire at 5am. We’ve now realised this is probably the busiest road in the whole of Luxembourg and it did let up for a few hours over night but not by much and having been woken up at 5am we didn’t get much sleep.
Rush hour seems to be a constant here with the traffic passing heavily until well gone 10pm and starting to get heavy again at 5am. I don’t know what time the working day starts here but it seems really early.
We couldn’t get back to sleep so I made coffees, put the hot water on for Ellie to have a shower and then put the fire on for the first time on this trip. It was just 9°c outside and 11°c inside. We weren’t cold but it’s nice to have a warm room to sit in after a shower.
By 9am we were on the dump station, emptying the grey water and toilet and filling with fresh. We didn’t particularly need to but we don’t know when our next water and dump stations will be so we played it careful. Then after a chat with our neighbours who were also English and from Cornwall we left the noisiest place in Luxembourg and went straight to the gas station to fill up with cheap diesel and then on to Lidl for supplies.
Stocked up with gas and food we had a 1 hour, 38 mile drive to our next location. Little Switzerland.
We arrived at the car park for our first stop at roughly 11:30am. I grabbed my camera bag and tripod and we set off to photograph the Schéissendëmpel Waterfall and the trap stairway. It was just a 600 meter hike up a step stone gorge stairway until we got to the wooden steps of the trap stairway.
It’s an amazing looking staircase made of wood but jutting out from the side of the gorge decending to the Schéissendëmpel Waterfall at the bottom, here I set up my camera and got some great shots of the waterfall and then we walked back along the road to Wanda to drop my camera stuff off and have some lunch.
We deliberately rushed this first part just to get the photos I wanted with all my camera gear and back at Wanda I emptied my camera and one other lens into a lightweight rucksack ready for a proper adventure. Then we had lunch of Lidl bakery food, stocked up on sweet stuff for energy and then we set off on a hike to who knows where.
Actually, I knew where we were going but I daren’t tell Ellie how far it is so I just said we would go out and see where we ended up. It was a very long way.
At 2pm we set off from the car park back towards the waterfall via the road we had just walked up and instead of going back to the falls we crossed over and went up stone steps set into the side of the gorge. It gradually got steeper and steeper almost ladder like until we reached a plateau and came to some woods. It was a beautiful hike gradually going uphill but we didn’t really notice until we started to get to more stone steps ascending up into the gorge and as we were climbing the walls started closing in making a passage way. Before we knew it we were deep into a network of canyons, with stone steps leading us up and down and round corners. It was a labyrinth straight from the pages of one of Tolkien’s books and every turn led to an even more amazing view. The gorge sides of granite and limestone were dotted with green and orange moss and with the fall leaves on the ground it was like a multicoloured carpet leading to some faraway land that you read about in a fairytale. We were so lucky to see it like this and had perfect weather.
Leaving the labyrinth we were now deep in the woods on top of the gorges with the river running far below us, but the views didn’t stop. We crossed wooden bridges, climbed hills and then more stone steps and then walked through more gorges that were so dark we couldn’t see each other at each end.
Then we started to head down and out of the second labyrinth and as we emerged from its darkness back onto the technicoloured world we could see the walls of it towering hundreds of feet above us.
At this point we were 5km in to our hike, and we continued on through the woods climbing more hills until we reached a sheltered picnic area where we stopped and had our drinks and took 10 minutes to catch our breath.
We debated walking back the way we came, which wouldn’t have bothered me because it was amazing but I really wanted to do the whole loop I had planned, but hadn’t mentioned to Ellie. And I also pointed out that she really likes walking……apparently. So I gave her the choice of turning back or continuing on and she chose the latter.
We continued through more woods and for the next kilometre or so it was all uphill until finally it levelled off and as we rounded a bend in the trail it started going down. We crossed more bridges, some over rivers and some of gaps in the gorges but all were incredible. At 10km in we both wished we brought more to drink but I knew it couldn’t be to much further and now we were almost back at ground level with the river next to us. Our final hurdle to leave the trail was to cross a bridge of stones running through the river. Ellie told me to film her crossing incase she fell in which I did but that also left me with 2 phones in my hand so I hoped I didn’t fall in because that would have been seriously expensive.
Safely across the otherside we had just a 600 meter walk to Wanda and we were grateful to get a cold drink and sit down. We hiked 11.8km in total. That’s 7.3 miles in English with 200 meters of climbing, we were both pretty knackered.
Back in Wanda I reset the sat nav for our camping spot which luckily for us was only a mile away and 10 minutes later we were parked in a lovely free aire on some grass that is a designated area for Motorhomes for 1 night. The sign actually says 12 hours, but we will be leaving it tomorrow during the day and maybe coming back to it tomorrow. It’s a great park up, and although there’s other campers here it’s so much quieter than last nights spot so hopefully we’ll get more sleep.Read more