Brisk morning walk

After a good night’s rest, The Wandelgek had a delicious breakfast and then went out for a walk. It had been raining that night and early morning but now ot had stopped raining. He walked towards the east side of the village where he joined the DMT again.

This part of the DMT was about climbing the 4th of the 7 summits, which was The Gulperberg. After leaving the village, The Wandelgek entered a forest and followed the trail up towards the summt  which was barely outside of the village.

The higher he climbed, the better the view got…

Near the summit there were no trees, instead yhere were meadows where sheep tasted the fresh grass, shepherded by The Holy Virgin Mary herself…

On the summit was large monument of the Virgin Mary…

This monument was inaugurated on Ascension day in 1935. 30.000 people joined in a parade to the monument. A testimony to the enormous amount of Catholics that lived in the southern Netherlands in thise days. Nowadays The Netherlands are officially a land where religious people are a minority.This decline in religious people happened in just a few decennia.

From the summit the view was reaching quite  far and wide, even now that it started to rain again…

These table signs show what can be seen (with bright weather). On the sign below which was looking east, almost all locations that The Wandelgek had visited in the last couple of days were visible  like the villages of Eys, Wahlwiller  Vijlen and Vaals and the Eyserbos and Vijlenerbos.

On the sign below was the view west,  which did show the village of Gulpen, but otherwise this showed untreaded territory and it would remain untreaded, because The Wandelgek had planned to walk south, following the DMT towards Belgium.

The Wandelgek finished the 8 kilometer walk of the Gulperberg summit and because it had started to rain more focefully, he decided to return to the Herberg De Zwarte Ruiter.

Shelter from the rain: Tea and coffee break

At Herberg De Zwarte Ruiter, he ordered a cappuccino and a piece of cherry flan. Flan is a famous local delicacy, specifically the flan covered with locally grown fruits, like cherries, apples, pears, plums, prunes, gooseberries etcetera…

Whenever a family in Limburg has invited guests, you can be 100% sure that you will receive a piece of flan at coffee or teatime…

While it was still raining, The Wandelgek looked around in the guestroom of the inn and noticed several beautiful paintings on the wall and these tiny heads of clay that were all unique in shape and facial expression…

They really caught his eye and he started to walk past the panneling on top of which the heads were attached…

They reminded him of the art work of dutch artist Jean Dulieu. He was a dutch artist who drew and painted and he wrote stories. His most famous work however was that about a forest gnome named Paul (in dutch: Paulus de Boskabouter) and a witch named Eucaplypta. His best work about the forest gnome Paul was Paul and the acorn guys (in dutch: Paulus en de eikelmannetjes).

These hundreds of unique acorn guys with all a unique face, were a bit like these bodiless heads on the wall.

Gulpen Beer walk

Outside the rain had finally stopped and The Wandelgek decided to go on a long afternoon walk. He had discovered this Gulpener bierwandeling (Gulpen beer walk) and decided to loosely follow the route of that walk. More about tge Gulpener beer walk at: Gulpener Bierwandeling

Gulpen village center 1

The walk started for The Wandelgek in front of Herberg De Zwarte Ruiter. He 1st visited tge old center of Gulpen…

The Gulpener Brewery borders the square where Herberg De Zwarte Ruiter and on its wall was this gorgeous mural. To the left you can see transportation tubes, probably for water, crossing the road…

The Wandelgek now left the square and turned towards the old village center  walking through a street behind the brewery, where the brewing vessels were visible through the windows…

The walls were white chalked and if they had stayed like that, they would have been really inviting for graffiti artists, but they were not  because an artist had created a very large mural depicting the landscape and animals of the local country. It was actually one of the very, very best murals The Wandelgek had ever seen???

Zooming in on that awesome mural, showing some more details of landscape, plants…

…and animals???

After having absorbed the mural for a while , The Wandelgek continued towards the village’s Sint Petruskerk (Saint Peter Church)…

The Wandelgek didn’t enter the church, but he loved the niverlsteiner sand stones used for its walls that were all from local quarries. Nivelsteiner sandstone is a fine-grained tertiary sandstone that comes from the area of ​​the Worm valley in the border region of Dutch South Limburg and Germany. It is named after the disappeared village and quarry Nivelstein, just across the border at Kerkrade near Herzogenrath. It is an extremely pure, highly porous white sandstone. The sandstone occurs as (very locally) parched banks in Miocene beach deposits, which are called ” silver sands “. They are classified in the Dutch stratigraphy at the Breda Formation as part of Heksenberg’s Layer Pack.

 

He walked on past the older buildings that were still left in Gulpen (a large part of Gulpen is also a modern new village).

One of the buildings was a pub named De Leeuw van Vlaanderen, which is named after The Wandelgek’s favorite dutch language book by Hendrik Conscience. Read more about that in this webblog about the Belgian city of Courtrai (Kortrijk): Kortrijk – 2008

Then he left the village and walked over some tree bordered lanes. He noticed two large stones/boulders, one on each side of the road that seemed a bit strange. Thhey were similar stones, but somehow they seemed quite different and  suddenly he realised why…

The right one was spick and span while the left one was overgrown by moss. He could not immediately discover why that was, but probably the left one was less protected against rainfall by the canopy of leaves above…

Castle Neubourg 1: Cloudy sky

The Wandelgek now crossed a road with a lot of traffic and then followed a castle lane towards Castle Neubourg…

As he came close to the main gate, he noticed that the inner courtyard was closed for public and there were people around so he decided to walk around the castle instead, following its walls and enjoying his views over the castle moat and its towers…

Castle Neubourg is as you can see for yourself on the pictures below, desperately in need of renovation, which of course costs a lot of money. That’s why the local Gulpener Brewery (the one of the murals shown before) has been and still is brewn. It is a pilsener type beer, marketed into the higher more luxureous segment and thus it appears in a distinguished blue bottle. Part of the money paid for a beer bottle is reserved for the renovation of Castle Neubourg…

The moat was full of greenery. Below you can also see the castle bridge crossing the moat…

The towers were not at all plump like some castle’s defense towers, but looked quite graceful…

The Wandelgek kept following the long walls until they ended…

…and he saw meadows with cows…

He sat down on a bench for a while, looking around at the castle walls and the cows and just enjoying the quietness of this area…

Meanwhile it finally had stopped raining and The Wzndelgek noticed that the clouds were slowly breaking, giving away to the sun…

The cows enjoyed their dinner…

Then he followed the path towards the hamlet of Euverem…

The Wandelgek was now at one of the lowest areas of the entire Dutch Mountain Trail, deep in the valley of the river Gulp, looking up to the hills where he had been walking and would walk again after tonight…

Euverem

Euverem (Limburg: Öäverem or De Dil) is a hamlet of Gulpen in the municipality of Gulpen-Wittem and has about 150 inhabitants.  Earlier spellings of the name are Euvenheim, Euversheim and Euvererm; these names refer to medieval habitation. “Euver” means “over” (across the Gulp) and “heim” means “home”.

The approximately 35 houses are located around the Euveremseweg (English: Euverem road) of the same name and the Kampsweg, which lies at right angles to Pesaken and Crapoel. The hamlet consists of two streets and is located in the Gulpdal in the middle of the South Limburg Heuvelland, between Aachen and Maastricht. East of Euverem flows the river Gulp.

There used to be a tram connection in Euverum and an old tram stop but this fallen signpost didn’t predict anything good for that tram stop…

Although the clouds were breaking open and the sun occasionally penetrated through, it was still cloudy and The Wandelgek decided to have a short break to enjoy a good glass of red wine at Gasthof Euverem (Guesthouse Euverem.

Then he walked on towards Reijmerstock…

There were lots of walking routes in the area, mostly color coded and signposted.

Hopfields near Reijmerstock

The Gulpener Brewery is famous in The Netherlands for its use of local products to brew beer.

The brewery tries to produce its beer in a sustainable way. Barley and hops are purchased from farmers in the region, who grow their products as sustainably as possible. Gulpener has about sixty suppliers for this, good for 500 hectares of environmentally friendly cultivation (2008). The brewery also recycles the labels and runs on green energy. Since 2004, all beers produced by Gulpener have met the Agro Milieukeur standard. The company is trying to make the production process more sustainable, for example through improved insulation of the hot water storage and the use of solar cells in the illuminated advertising of cafes. Because the brewery has not yet succeeded in producing completely CO2 neutral, because there is too little biogas available in Limburg, it planted five hectares of forest near Gulpen in 2007 for CO2 compensation. Gulpener has won a number of incentive awards, such as the National Incentive Award for Corporate Social Responsibility and the Limburg Award for Sustainable Entrepreneurship in 2003, the Euregio Environmental Award in 2005 and the PINT Incentive Award in 2005. In 2015 she received the CSR Netherlands Award for the most sustainable company of the past. ten years and the Climate Medal of the HIER climate bureau Foundation.

At Reijmerstock are hopfields and the walk went through some of those, before returning to Euverem and Gulpen. The sky was almost completely blue now and The Wandelgek decided to return via the same route, past Castle Neubourg to Gulpen, because he loved seeing the castle in sunlight…

After a sturdy walk through the hills, he reached the meadow where he sat on a bench watching the castle and the cows before. Now the meadow was drenched in sunlight.

Than he walked on towards

Castle Neubourg 2: Sunny sky

All looked a lot friendlier and much better for photography, now that the sun was ablaze…

It was also even more apparent, why the Gulpener Brewery was sponsoring the renovation of the castle. Not only the castle itself but also some ruined buildings on its premises were in need of a make over…

The castle itself was now showed itself in all its splendour…

The a bit dreary moat of a few hours earlier was now covered in fresh green…

After the castle there was still a short walk towards the village of Gulpen, where The Wandelgek had agreed to meet his walking companion for tge next sections at the Beer garden of the Gulpener Beer Brewery. The church tower of Gulpen grew larger the closer he got…

Than he finished the last stretch, crossing the large road, slowly artiving on the outskirts of the village.

 

Gulpen Village Center 2

He passed the Sint Petruskerk…

…and ended his Gulpener beer walk…

…in front of the brewery and the entrance to its beer garden.

Gulpener Beer Brewery and Beer garden

Gulpener Bierbrouwerij BV is an independent Dutch brewery in Gulpen, Netherlands. The brewery was founded in 1825 by Laurens Smeets.

Gulpener makes a lager sold in the Netherlands. Ingredients, such as barley and hops, are sourced from local farmers. These farmers produce their products in ecologically friendly ways.

The company makes the following beers:

• Gulpener Pilsner
• Gulpener Korenwolf
• Gulpener Dort
• Gulpener Oud Bruin
• Gulpener Lentebock
• Gulpener Herfstbock
• Gulpener Gladiator
• Gulpener Rosé
• Sjoes
• Château Neubourg
• Gerardus Wittems Kloosterbier Dubbel
• Gerardus Wittems Kloosterbier Blond
• Limburgs Land Eko Pilsner
• Mestreechs Aajt
• Gulpener Wintervrund
• Rowwen Hèze Bier
• Organic certified:
  • Ur-Pilsner (Pilsner)
  • Ur-Weizen (Weizen)
  • Ur-Hop (India pale lager)
• Zwarte Ruiter zuur bier
• (Seasonal) Gulpener Rogge Tripel (a rye beer)

The Wandelgek is personally a great fan of the Gulpener brewery beers, specifically the rye beer, the Korenwolf White Beer, The Ur Weizen and the Gerardus Abbey style beers.

The Wandelgek entered the brewery’s tasting room and walked through towards the beer garden behind. There his friend was already waiting for him and we ordered a beer to celebrate his birthday and the start of the rest of this walking event?

After some drinks we moved towards De Zwarte Ruiter for dinner.

Dinner at De Zwarte Ruiter

Weather was still good so this occassion we had dinner on the terrace outdoors…

The Wandelgek chose the above stew which had beer in it….Delicious?

End of my solo hike…but not of my DMT hike

And so ended my solo hike…?… but not my Dutch Mountain Trail hike?. The next walks I would be accompanied by a long time walking and hiking friend who has accompanied The Wandelgek on many of his travels and walks.

As of tomorrow we would both walk some distances of the DMT and a very interesting deviation from that trail.