On the tail of the carters
“He was once at home on a hundred roads, by wind and weather he travelled through the land”, stated an obituary for a “Bergisch carriage driver”. The carriage drivers who still travelled the rough roads in the Bergisches Land had to be tough, transporting many goods, from crops to raw iron to dangerous gunpowder.
The stories told by the carriage drivers in the many carriage driver’s pubs are also the topic of an information board along the trail, as is how dangerous a job transporting highly explosive gunpowder over the rough roads was. Almost incidentally, there is also a popular recreation area between the valley reservoir, pilgrimage site and a “Bonte Kerke” (colourful church) to discover.
At two audio stations, you can listen to various episodes on the life and work of the carriage drivers.