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No concrete, just soil and sometimes a little sand!

I crossed paths with maybe 10-15 hikers during the entire three days, so not very many, but enough to know that I wasn't completely alone and hopelessly lost :-)

Wow--cool; thanks! @@margaretapinter

Cool! Thank you!!@@margaretapinter

Best of luck, it's an absolutely beautiful hike! Make sure to stay hydrated out there, it gets really hot in July!

It's up now

They are similar in material use, but quite different in application and technique, so it's an easy mistake to mix the two. However, the use of a wooden formwork and 'mallets' to compact loose earth is indeed classified as rammed earth, even though there is of course a lot of variation regionally in how exactly the ramming earth process is carried out. Feel free to check out pages 227-229 from the scientific article by Niroumand, Hamed, M. F. M. Zain, and Maslina Jamil. "Various types of earth buildings." Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences 89 (2013): 226-230, which explains the difference between rammed earth and cob, among many other earth-building techniques.

Thanks for the comment. I was also very much part of the building process, which did not leave as much time to properly document the whole thing as much as I wanted to. Truth be told, this video wasn't ever meant to be an instructional video anyway, and the slow pace/meandering visuals aren't everyone's cup of tea, which is fine as well :-)

Overall I didn't encounter anyone after I had settled on a spot to camp for each night. I would suggest for you to look up the principles of Leave No Trace, if you're interested in the ethics of wild camping. Here are some things that that I did that ensured I was being as respectful of my surroundings as possible on this trip: 1) I chose spots to camp that were marked on a map as publicly accessible, such as lookout points. This not only made it easier for me to find places that had a nice flat place to camp, but it also increased my chances of setting up my tent in an area where I wasn't actively disturbing any wildlife by setting my tent on local plants, for example, because it was already heavily trodden and void of all vegetation in spots. 2) I respected private property signs and obviously didn't camp in areas that were marked as protected areas, such as the La Trapa area on my fourth day. 3) I made sure to set up my tent just before sunset and pack up as the sun rose, so my chances of bothering- or being noticed by someone were quite slim. 4) I practiced leave no trace principles, primarily that I took all of my trash with me and buried human waste in a cathole far from the trail itself. Hope this helps!

Thanks Andrew! Great to hear that you learned something from my experience! I highly recommend the trail, it's absolutely gorgeous

Hi Margereta. I completed 8 of the stages of the GR221 in September. Your video and information helped.👍👍

Very happy to hear, I hope that it was a good hike! I'm glad that I could help in some way :) @@Andrew.........

Hi, the structure is built over two summers (because rammed earth is highly weather/climate- dependent), this summer being the second one. We are hoping to start the second phase of work in mid-July, and a video documenting that process will be up soon after hopefully. This is long-term project, and even after the two phases it still won't be fully complete probably :)

It’s a wonder it doesn’t wash away during the rainy season.

To be fair we did cover the top for a year, but only because it wasn't finished. Once painted- and periodically maintained with limewash, these structures can last for centuries!@@stberchmans

We are hoping to finish the second half of the structure this summer, the process is very weather dependent, so we had to split it into two summers' work :) Stay tuned!

@@margaretapinter I will follow the process with interest. 😉

Thank you for the kind comments and for your interest! Yes, that very thin layer of straw helps the structure in shifting as it dries over time especially :) Interesting to see the slight differences in doing things in similar vernacular architecture! In the case of this structure we are going to be covering all the walls with a mixture of soil, sand, water and wood shavings in order to create a more weatherproof barrier...a process hopefully will be featured in part two!

Although rammed earth by itself would be quite resistant, plastering it would definitely increase the longevity and also even out the surface at the cob joints. All the best for the part 2! I’m currently researching into ‘formworks for a communal rammed earth building process’ as part of my master thesis and would love to document this process by using your video as one of the case studies if that’s alright. Happy to share the final outcome of it if you’re interested :)

@@rikunjshah Sounds like an interesting topic for a masters thesis, feel free to use this as a case study, I'm glad to help! :) Feel free to shoot me an email you can find it on the culturing care website) if you need more details or if you just want to send me the final product! Good luck with the thesis!

@@margaretapinter Thank you once again :)

@@rikunjshah Your point about plastering is right on. We already started it in small sections inside last summer, but weather stopped us from making much progress. We use a mix of local clay / sand and fine wood chips, and had to experiement with different ratios before we found what is the most sturdy and least likely to crack. It's tricky and the ratios would vary by the type of soil. So 'localization' is essential, and part of the beauty, even though it limits standardization to some extent. Getting soil moisture right during ramming is key. When we rammed the top layer, the soil was too dry, and we will probably need to remove some 30 cm because it's not hard enough. We will finish the walls with 2-3 layers of sun dried mud bricks. We are planning a green roof with native plants. Stay tuned and good luck with the thesis!

Thanks Gen :) It's a challenging topic to be a part of, but very essential!

Hi Kenny, thank you for your question. The two techniques are quite similar indeed and I am sure that there are cultural differences to what is considered which. Generally speaking however, adobe consists of earth usually mixed with other natural materials (such as straw,) and water, which is then dried out in the form of bricks and only then utilised in the building of structures. Rammed earth on the other hand refers to a technique of building that mimics the way that sedimentary rocks are formed, as relatively dry earth is pounded manually as you can see in the video. In traditional Hungarian contexts the use of adobe bricks and rammed earth as building techniques are still used today, and sometimes they are even used in conjunction with each other. The reason why a minimal amount of straw was added (and only in between every third layer of pounded earth...although this might not be clear from the video itself) was because that layer allows the wall to be a little bit more flexible than it otherwise would be. Though I am unsure of the exact physics, what was described to me by the knowledge-holder is that the straw essentially creates a buffer layer where the layer of pounded earth can move around on top of each other, making the structure more resistant to any sort of external pressure such as high winds or earthquakes. I'm glad that my video brought up such an interesting question and I hope that this helped answer it to some degree!

@@bigonprivacy2708 I didn't actually think about how the differences in the rammers' shape could affect the levels of compression, but it makes total sense! Thanks for this.

Thank you for your comment, I wholeheartedly agree, the aspect of community cannot be ignored in this type of contstruction!

A pillecukor az kötelezö!! Mindenképpen remélem hogy lesz még hasonló :)

Thanks Angus :) My camera died halfway through the hike so I could only get so much footage, but I think I still managed to capture some of the beauty of Danish summer!