Sunday 19 May 2013
| Distance (km) | 13 kms | |||
| Distance (time) | 4 hrs | |||
| Hard / Soft surface | 25% / 75% | |||
| Landscape |
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| Weather |
 18° 3 Bft
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It's a cloudless blue sky when we wake up in the morning so it promises to become a good day! We drive to Essen and park the car at the railway station. We cheat a bit, because instead of walking back north and pick up the GR5 on the other side of the railroad where we left the route yesterday we actually walk to the south side of the station and cross the railroad by a bridge to continue the GR5 there.
As soon as we're on the GR5 it becomes a trail through the woods passing behind the last line of houses of Essen. After a kilometre or so we enter again a residential area over a long and straight street met nice and big houses. At the last houses it seems we're going back into the forest. Well, we do, in a way, but the forest is full of big houses. Only after we passed those houses it becomes quiet again and we can enjoy. Until the moment we run into a group of walkers passing the forest talking in very high voice, unfortunately. The forest opens up and we see a small lake. A lot of trees have been cut here which looks a bit depressing in spite of the sunny weather. To our surprise we end up on a busy cycle path that we have to follow for almost a kilometre before we can again take a soft trail really entering the Kalmthout Moors. The first part is soggy later becoming drier with sand dunes. The path is a lot of loose sand and walking becomes strenuous. But it feels so good to walk in the sun in a T-shirt with 20 degrees centigrade! This is the best weather we've had so far this year. As we continue over this impressive plains we meet more and more day tourists. Having crossed the plains we enter the forest again before reaching a main road. Now we know where all those people come from: there is a large parking area here with a visitors centre, bar, food truck and ice cream truck. No wonder it was so busy. We cross the parking and follow a gravel cycle path until the first houses of Kalmthout. The last straight section over the Kijkuitstraat leads us to the railway station Kijkuit – not much more than two platforms without ticket machine or any other facility. Thankfully we already bought our tickets online this morning. Again we just missed our train and we have to wait 45 minutes for the next one. According to the GPS there is a snackbar 700 m from here…..should we walk there for an ice cream? In the end we are simply too lazy to walk 700 m there ánd back and we just sit on the platform. Nothing exciting happens apart from the occasional passing train. Our train is full: a large group of boy scouts and a Dutch couple with 2 small children that scream as if they need to be heard in Brussels. It's good it's only 10 minutes to Essen from where we can drive home. |
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Download track EssKal.gpx