Taking the train to go hiking. A good idea, it's practical, it's easy, it's relaxing and it's good for the environment.
Hiking by train is gaining popularity. For quite some time our Dutch neighbours have been successful with their 'NS hikes' and recently our own railway company also started promoting the combination hiking / train.
Personally we've been using public transportation means for quite some time and for almost all of our GR hikes. To accomplish that we usually have to combine train, bus and/or tram. We can imagine that for many people this still is a bridge too far ...
But once in a while we're able to organise a GR hike only by using the train.
Of course, this is much easier compared to having to organise the combination with other forms of public transport.
Contrary to what many still think, it's no problem to buy a train ticket for a different outbound and homeward journey, as long as you start from and return to the same place. Just clearly indicate that you want to travel to X, and that you want to come back from Y. No matter where you travel in Belgium, your ticket back and forth never has to cost more then 14,8 Euro, provided you use a Rail Pass (for youngsters with a Go Pass 10 that price is 10 Euro). See the article Heen en terug tips.
For those interested we provide a map overview of all the GR hikes we could organise by using exclusively the train.
Note that the more recent topoguides always contain a chapter with suggestions about hikings that can be organised with the public transport and more in particular by train. Depending upon the distance we plan to cover on a hike, the suggestions might suit us, but if they don't, we have to find out for ourselves how to organise the hike. That way our overview may be considered a (modest) complement to the information provided in the topoguides.
Click on a train symbol on the map. A message will appear showing the name of the hike and a link to the article where we comment on that hike. In that article there's a paragraph 'Back and forth' describing how we organised the hike.
The symbols are placed at the spot where the GR hike starts, not where the train station is situated. The itinerary between the station and the start of the GR path is sometimes described in the topoguide, or it's easy to find the way there by means of the topographic maps in the topoguide, or we indicate the GPS track ourselves on the map in our article on this website.
Important! Always verify yourself the itinerary and the travel times! Timetables and travel routes change in time and also differ according to the moment you want to travel (week or weekend, peak or off-peak hours, holidays or working periods, ...). Also keep in mind that our travel schemes start from and return to Antwerpen, so if you're living elsewhere, your route will be different.
| Next > |
|---|
