Exploring the Dutch Mountain Trail: Eijsden to Maastricht

Because we didn’t have enough to walk the whole Dutch Mountain Trail during our vacation, we decided to simply pick 3 sections that fitted our available time. On the first day, because we had to first travel from home by car to The Netherlands we picked the last 17,5k of the trail from Eijsden to Maastricht as our first walk. Eijsden was easy to reach by car, close to the highway and it had a direct train connection with Maastricht, so we could park in Eijsden, walk the trail to Maastricht and then take the train back to Eijsden to pick up our car. We parked our car on the outskirts of Eijsden in Mariadorp and were immediately on the trail after crossing the street from the parking lot. The first section was still urban and after 2k we reached the castle of Eijsden, which we recognised from having visited on another trip, and then 1k more to the village where we took a ferry. After the crossing of the Maas for 3 euro per person we continued our hike which was immediately more into nature. After a few more kilometres we stopped at a bird watching hut and had our lunch in the shade. After 6k of walking we crossed the Albert canal and had short ‘urbanised’ stretch again but then the path dived into nature again with a steep climb with a beautiful view on the Maas river. After roughly 10k we reached D’n Observant, one of the 7 summits. There were no path markings and we kind of guessed where we had to go based on the gps track even though there was no obvious path to follow. After some steep climbing we reached the top and had a good view over the valley. After this high we descended to 2 ponds created by mining activities, now turned into nature and tourism. We resisted the temptation to stop for a drink and pushed on for the last 5k. After leaving the old mining site we soon reached the outskirts of Maastricht and had an easy and agreable walk along the river into the centre. Before taking the train back to our car we stopped for a drink at Bistro ‘t Wijcker Cabinet, less than a kilometre away from the train station. It looked like a nice place for dinner but as we had other dinner plans already we limited ourselves to refreshing beer and some tea to conclude our introduction to the Dutch Mountain Trail. Overall, it was a very varied walk with almost no sections where we had to share the road with cars, even getting into Maastricht we were on footpaths or roads with almost no car traffic allowed. A very nice walk, and with the elevation to tackle, not at all typical Dutch terrain.