Following on directly from the 1^st Panhellenic Trail meeting, we were pleased to participate in the 3rd European Certified Trail Meeting in Menalon, Arkadia on 6th & 7th November 2017. The decision to hold this meeting in Greece was taken last year with the agreement of all the participants due the recognition of the great potential for hiking in Greece and the growing interest shown in Greece as a hiking destination in recent years.

The organisation of the meeting was managed by Menalon Trail team, with representatives of certified routes from Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and from Greece; Andros, Skiathos, Xanthi, Chios and of course the hosts!

The first day was devoted to the development of an agenda of issues and hearing about new data from research on hiking in the German market (the presentation of similar data from other European countries was delivered to us on the previous afternoon as part of the closure of the 1st Panhellenic Trail Meeting).

Various ideas of cooperation were also discussed, including synergy actions among the certified European routes.

The second day was hiking in a wonderful section of the Menalon Trail and then a new round of discussions and exchange of views on joint actions. Among other things, we presented tools that can be used to monitor the maintenance needs and problems of walking trails, where we had the opportunity to present an application that the Andros Routes volunteers use to monitor the paths of Andros.

We thank the Menalon team for their warm hospitality and excellent organisation. As always the meeting was significant and enlightening and we left much richer in acquaintances, opportunities for cooperation and full with useful ideas from other parts of Europe far more advanced than us on hiking issues!

For more info https://www.drt915.gr/diimeri-sinantisi-se-vitina-dimitsana-gia-ta-pistopiimena-monopatia-vidsph/  and https://typos-i.gr/article/pairnontas-ta-boyna-me-swsto-tropo