^{Driving with the Brohltalbahn (Brohl valley railway) Vulkan Express to Oberzissen}

Hello Hive Friends

We wanted to go on a hike but my wife had a little bit different idea. She wanted to take the nostalgic Vulkan Express from Brohl over Bad Tönisstein, Burgbrohl, Weiler, Niederzissen to the destination Oberzissen and hike from there.

^{train tickets}

I checked out the area around Oberzissen and found 3 interesting places we could hike to.

The Bausenberg is and old small vulcano
The Bausenberg is still the best preserved horseshoe crater in the Eifel!
There is a wide variety of different types of biotopes on the crater and its wall. The Niederzissen local mountain offers well over 500 plant species and an animal world with more than 5,000 different species that are protected by nature. (source)
Rodder Maar
The so-called shallow water near Niederdürenbach has an eventful past. It probably originated from a meteorite impact and has been used by humans in a variety of ways over the last 200 years. Around 1800, for example, the maar served as a fish pond for the Olbrück lords and later as a cultivation area or source of feed for agriculture. (source)
The Olbrück castle ruine
The castle invites you to take a journey through thousands of years of exciting geological and cultural history!
On a romantic tour around the ruins, you will experience - guided by the various narrative stations - formative developments in our history and thus reach the era in which this medieval castle was built. Finally, the lord of the castle awaits you in the imposing keep, who has his own thoughts about creation and the world view...(source)

I created a round hiking tour to these three places and got a 16km hiking tour from the train to Bausenberg to Rodder Maar to Olbrück castle and back to the train.

But first of all we had to take the train. We drove to Brohl with a rented car and got our train tickets there. This train is very slow and you have enough time to enjoy the view.

Vulkan Express

The funny thing was that the conductor jumped out of the train at every station and shouted something that I couldn't understand. It wasn't until the return journey that I realized that he had shouted the names of the stations.

Hiking tour

➡️ 16,6 km

↗️ 447 m

↘️ 452 m

⏳ 5:18

🔃 3,8 km

Below are some impressions and photos we took along the way. Overall the hike was nice and the last part walking up and down to the castle was exhausting. We had to walk a few meters in altitude and I had the feeling that we had to do them all here at the castle. There wasn't much to see at the Bausenberg and the area inside the crater was closed. From the outside you could see several buildings and a few deer.