Idea and aims

Walking is an especially sustainable form of the travelling, it contains an intensive natural experience as well as the personal meeting with people and regional culture.

European long distant hiking trails promote the meeting of hikers of different generations and social origin as well as from locals with "foreign" visitors.

The European trail E 8 begins in Ireland, leads through England, the Netherlands, Germany, Czechia and Slovakia. On the border to the Ukraine ends the marked way. A gap exists in the Ukraine and in Romania, but the last part of the trail in Bulgaria reaches its goal on the coast of the Black Sea.

In 2005 compiled Günther Krämer of the network of long distant hiking, Dr. Dagmar Everding, the chairperson of Ostwind e. V., and Ihor Dydytsch of Eco Hal Ostwind the draught of a route which fills a part of the gap in the area of the Ukrainian Carpathian Mts. In summers, 2006 and in 2007 a group of German hikers tested the new route. Partially the group was accompanied by representatives of Ukrainian environmental organisations as well as by Ukrainian scientists and their students. We would like to support the hiking about the Carpathian Mts comb and the visit of small Carpathian Mts villages also people from Western Europe to promote the ecological tourism in the Carpathian Mts.

The way in the area of the Ukrainian Carpathian Mts touches the last original primeval forests of Europe. Increasingly the participants in Ostwind hiking tours are interested in these primeval forests, not least because in 2011 the UNESCO commission added to the existing beech primeval forests heritage of the world in the Carpathian Mts a German heritage of primeval beech forests.

Thus originated the idea of a European primeval forest route which connects the primeval forests of the world heritage by a long distant hiking route, as well as in between recumbent primeval forests or primeval forest developments. The European primeval forest route should be a project of the sustainable regional development which brings together ecologically engaged and culturally open people in Europe.