Volcano Trail - The final stretch

As I am currently on paid leave I got to finalize my section hike of the Volcano Trail which I had started almost a year ago. Friday the weather gods were on my side. After a fairly moderate climb up to the crater rim I was rewarded with lovely views on the popular "Dauner Maare", three crater lakes adjacent to each other. I took my time to surround the lakes and opted to stay at the youth hostel in the town Daun. 70€ for a room, including three-course dinner and breakfast buffet sounded like a real bargain.

Schalkenmehrener Maar

Weinfelder Maar

Dronke tower

Gemündener Maar

Youth hostel dinner!

It had rained overnight and it still poured when I left the hostel in the morning. I scrambled uphill for the next two or three hours, and finally reached the highest point of the Volcano Trail. The Ernstberg peak stands at 700 m, is the second highest hill in the Eifel region, and riddled with grottos and caves. But this time of the year they were closed off due to bat season.

The trail was a slippery slope downhill but I managed getting down without going down. I came through small villages surrounded by farmland until I reached the outskirts of Gerolstein, passing the ruin Kasselburg, a castle built in the 12th and 13th century.

Castle ruin Kasselburg

A steep incline lifted me up to the plateau of an ancient limestone cliff, the "Gerolsteiner Dolomiten". Around 380 million years ago, the area was covered by a warm, subtropical shallow sea, in which mighty reefs of stromatoporoids (relatives of sponges or corals) were formed. After dolomitization, and other geomorphological processes such as submersion and rock folding, the Devonian deposits were raised up again.

The plateau has some interesting features to offer, there is an old Celtic-Roman place of worship, a volcanic crater from our recent past (10,000 years ago), a cave where early humans lived and panoramic views galore. What a great finale!

Gerolstein

I reached the central bus station in Gerolstein, fetched something to drink and got on a bus, caught the train, then another train, and another bus, and was home by Saturday night.

The End.