Hiking and Mining @ Ardennes

Another camping trip, it’s been some weeks and I was already missing the wild camping life, so it was about time that we went on the road again. Me and Mariska joined Bert in the van and as always we started in Kanne and went on south to the Ardennes. We drove to the place where we met Thomas and Yves and we all got ready to hike. I underestimated the hike a bit but it was awesome though. We visited a really nice slate-mine. Slate is very dark and consists out of thin layers of minerals and it is often used as roofing.

We continued the hike to search for another entrance but couldn’t find it and returned back down. Although we all were exhausted, the hike was really nice with some really good views and some parts of the woods were overgrown with moss, it was really nice and also a very good suspension for our knees and ankles. We had another idea to try the day after so the next challenge was to search for a spot to put our tents. After some driving, we found a spot in the woods far enough from houses and dense enough to keep our noise down. We enjoyed the evening with a really nice campfire, cooked some food and had a good night sleep after. As always I got cold in the middle of the night but a quick walk through the woods helped getting back to sleep and staying warm for the rest of the night.

We continued the next day and went on to conquer the big hill again to find the next entrance. A slight bigger mine with a shaft filled with water that must have gone at least 20 to 30 meters down. The tricky part of navigating through these mines is that slate can become very slippery if it gets wet and since you focus on putting your feet stable on the ground, you don’t watch your head enough and so head-bumps happened very often. It was really beautiful when somebody shines some light in the shaft, it was very clear and blue.