The Wispertalsteig – green and quiet

The Wispertal is a relatively sparsely populated valley in the hessian Taunus Region. Within the area a whole bunch of trails have now been created, called the "Wispertrails".

Our first visit brought us to the Wispertalsteig, the trail that originally started the development of the Wisper-Trails. When we arrived a whole bunch of cars was already parked, so that the parking lot was overflowing. For a moment we even considered turning around and finding another place to go hiking. Due to the Corona Virus we're still trying to avoid getting close to other people. 

On the other hand even though there seemed to be many people out on the trail we expected it to be easy enough keeping distance in most places, and we'd just skip the main attractions in case they were crowded.

The trail begins at the edge of Espenschied and first leads across open fields. Close to the start it crosses a cows pasture. The close encounter with the animals and the beautiful views across the green grass reminded us of our vacations in Austria.

Soon the trail started descending towards the valley and we walked onto a small, muddy footpath leading us to the first attraction, the "Saurierfelsen". Here a group of people was seated having a picnic, so we just allowed ourselves a short look from a safe distance, before continuing the descent towards the valley floor.

Here the path follows along the small river for a few hundred meters before reaching another special place on this trail. The "Werkerbrunnen" is an old well, producing water that contains a lot of iron. The old brickwalls and stairs are overgrown with weeds and we found them more interesting than the well itself.

Right after the Werkerbrunnen followed the probably steepest ascent of the whole trail. We got warm enough to finally take off our warm shirts and enjoyed the little workout. After about 230m of walking up the hill we reached the plateau again, and once again had a nice wide view across pastures and the surrounding forest areas.

The trail now curves back towards Espenschied, and people that have walked enough can use the chance to walk back to town. We continued on, now walking on a wider track on the plateau until we reached the Mehrholzblick. To us this is definitely the highlight of the trail. A whole bunch of people were sitting here and enjoying their picnic, so we walked on a few meteres and found a place further away from the crowds.

Here we unpacked our gas cooker and cooked a nice meal to eat while enjoying the view. The Mehrholzblick was in the sun at that time of the day, so we really wanted to just hang out there for a long time. But after about thirty minutes we did pack our things up anyways and continued walking.

The remaining section led us back down into the valley. There we walked by some overgrown stairs and brick walls and wondered what those were all about. We later researched that and found out that there used to be a "Reicharbeitslager" there during the Nazi Regime, even though now there is only little left. The best visible part is a stone gate with the letters "RAD" at the bottom of the valley close to the Laukenmühle.

From here on it was just a few kilometeres left. Those again went fairly steeply up the valley, partly beside a little stream which was really beautiful. Then we were back up on the pleatau and walked into Espenschied.

A really beautiful walk with great views!