So I'm going to be hiking from tarifa to Austria and am trying to plan out my gear list and stay as light as possible. It's not my first hike so I feel pretty confident but am having trouble finding maps and trying to figure out the weather changes as I go farther north and if a 0C underquilt on my hammock will be good enough. Also is it easy to find tanks for my jetboil in Spain or Portugal? Any advice is welcomed.
Hi, walked first 800 km from Tarifa across Andalucia this Spring. If you are staying light as possible then I would not take a stove. Meths or equivalent and petrol were only fuel that were common. Your hammock will inevitably be on the ground in some sites. Contact me via backoftheocean at gmail.com and I will help with maps and weather changes if you can give me more detail of time of year,
I would agree with the other John, if you are travelling light forget the stove, this is not by and large wilderness territory and there are usually inexpensive places to get a coffee or whatever. A light (under 1 kg) tent may be more versatile than a hammock given the range of terrains. For maps I used a Garmin GPS, downloaded the gpx files of the route from sites such as this and bought the relevant GPS maps on a SD card. Did not get lost! Weather depends on when you go.
hi there!
i was wondering if it would be possible to walk this trail in the other direction - so in other words, is the trail well marked both ways? i'll be walking from vienna to salzburg, so my question applies to the austrian bit of the trail.
also i'd like to know if there are any books or maps available about this part.
and last but not least: would you reckon i'd meet many fellow hikers on the way?
thanks so much for your answer, and thumbs up for the website! it's such a great help.
x nora
David, we are working on it as Traildino. But I can give you some advice: check this page.
http://hiking.waymarkedtrails.org/en/?zoom=9&lat=36.44008&lon=-5.30297&hill=0#
By clicking on "Routes" you get access to the GPX file. I know from experience that the routes that hikers added to OSM usually have a good quality. However, the this E4 is only partly added to OSM, so you will find only about 50% of the entire E4 covered in this track. Well, it's a very long way of course!