Around 350 participants with over 210 vehicles of the most varied kinds came to the Fernweh Camp on the last October weekend.
Some could hardly wait, and the first participants had already arrived punctually at 10 am on Friday morning for the opening of check-in. Thanks to good organisation and a clever system, there were no waiting times or even backlogs at any point during check-in to the Fernweh Camp in the Stöffel-Park.
The Stöffel-Park venue offers a great backdrop
The Stöffel-Park is a really great location for a meeting like this. The park takes its name from the Stöffel, a mountain in the Westerwald. It’s a huge basalt dome that originally reached almost 500 metres in height. It has shrunk considerably through the basalt mining that’s still partly carried out here today. In the early 1990s an excavation team made a sensational find here with the Stöffel mouse. Today the park is also an event location and an earth and industry museum at the same time. And it was in the midst of this great backdrop that the Fernweh Camp now took place.
In total, about 350 visitors and day guests came to the Fernweh Camp
That’s a considerable number when we consider that this event took place for the first time. Roger Nies, one of the organisers, told us about it: “We didn’t even do much advertising. Even so, over 210 vehicles came. Originally we’d reckoned on 50 to 70 vehicles. But the registrations didn’t stop.”
Invited were everyone from bicycle and motorcycle travellers, through off-road vehicles, pick-up campers, roof-tent fans, van lifers, all-wheel panel vans, all the way to trucks and many others. And that was reflected among the participants who arrived at the camp, connected to each other by their interest in travel. Because at the Fernweh Camp it’s not about which vehicle someone drives, but about the family-like exchange among like-minded people.
A guarantee of sunny, warm weather doesn’t exist at the end of October in these latitudes, of course, and certainly not in the Westerwald. Nature had decided on plenty of rain, wind and single-digit temperatures for the Fernweh Camp. But the participants weren’t put off by that. There was a lot of laughter, storytelling and exchanging of experiences, and contented faces were to be seen everywhere.
The organisers had put together a packed supporting programme
The organisers, Steffi and Benno Cramer, Marina and Thorsten Schneider, Steffi and Roger Nies, came up with the idea for the Fernweh Camp over a shared dinner. The organisation was really something to behold. Everything ran smoothly like clockwork, and for the visitors there were exciting travel talks and interesting workshops.
It got going on Friday afternoon, after the welcome, with a report about the Norway College, followed by a great travel talk with a Land Cruiser from Cameroon to the Congo, and later it went on an adventure tour along the Silk Road.
On Saturday there were various workshops on the subjects of vehicle lighting, dry bags from truck tarpaulins, building lithium batteries as well as the recovery seminar booked out long in advance, and in the afternoon and evening again travel talks that led the visitors virtually on great trips to Romania, Saudi Arabia and on motorcycles into the Caucasus. A photo safari and panoramic hikes rounded off this great programme.
In between and in the evening, the guests exchanged ideas again and again at the campfire or in the Nissen hut. It was lovely to see that people network rather than sit together in familiar groups. That’s also the intention of the Fernweh Camp. Roger Nies on this: “Our goal was to put on a family-like meeting. There was to be an exchange between the travellers. Our hope was that everyone would gather together at the campfire in the evening and not everyone crouch in front of or inside their car. The plan worked out completely. Friday at the campfire and Saturday, because of the rain, in the Nissen hut.”
Food and drink were taken care of too, with a drinks sale, snack stall, pizza bakery and coffee and cake. There were also a few exhibitors around the subject of off-road travel, gear and vehicles, and that without a fair atmosphere arising. A nice addition to the meeting.
By the way, part of the proceeds from this year’s Fernweh Camp will be made available to the Balthasar children’s and youth hospice in Olpe.
Look forward to the next Fernweh Camp already
The feedback from the participants was consistently positive. And so the organisers and the many helpers of the Fernweh Camp, without whom it wouldn’t work, were exhausted on Sunday but happy about the very successful event. So the Fernweh Camp will take place again next year. At the same time in the same place. Best to write the date in your calendar already: 23 to 25 October 2026.
The bar has been set pretty high for next year. The number of participants is meant to stay roughly stable, so that the camp and the talks hall don’t burst at the seams. Anyone who wants to be there will have to be quick with registration as soon as it’s possible. More information will be available in due course on the Fernweh Camp website as well as the event’s social media presence on Instagram and Facebook.
© Photos: Roger Nies, Florian Fischer, Björn Eldracher