Down by the riverside

 

So, uphill into trees. Along a bit. A castle. Up a bit more. An usually old Jewish cemetery. Skirt a bunch of fields. Down. Along the river into Bad Wimpfen. Old town. Timbered buildings.

Or, if you prefer a longer version…..

Joff was in TBM (Total Breakfast Mode - I’m sure you can imagine what that involved). That particular mission accomplished, and lunch catered for on the off chance that we might be close to starvation during the ensuing four or five hours, we bid farewell to our pitstop nestled amongst its vineyards. 

I set our pace to LDL (Long Distance Lope). Until today I had no idea what that translated into, speed-wise. Of course there was the speed camera incident, but I was going downhill on that occasion. Thanks to Joff’s Garmin watch thing, I can share with you fact fiends that the LDL is 2.5-2.75 mph.

As you may have noted from the first pic, this was probably the easiest walk of the nine, but we still got a sweat on climbing up through the trees to reach Gutenberg Castle. It dates from the late medieval period, has been continuously inhabited for nearly 800 years, and is now a hotel and restaurant. It’s not a ruin, so we didn’t bother going in.

A bit more of a climb brought us to the Jewish cemetery near Haßmersheim. A very serene place full of old trees. It’s not really that big, maybe equivalent to half a football field, but is nonetheless one of the largest and oldest in the whole of Germany, with burials dating back to the 16th century.

After that we were reminded more of walking at home, having to skirt lots of farmer’s fields, mostly growing maize. We came across a biomass plant, so maybe the crop was for that.

Eventually we wound our way down to the river, passing a church that is recorded as far back as the 10th century. It was all closed up, but apparently has some frescoes and knights’ crypts.

The last two or three miles were alongside the river, which is where we stopped to munch the lunch, daydreaming whilst watching some tiny fish go about their business. It felt fitting to end the walk with the Neckar as our companion. The end/beginning of the trail is at the train station. And very underwhelming it is too. Just a QR code on a lamppost to mark the spot.

I kind of felt like we should have had trumpeters or something. However, as we wandered into the old town in search of our hotel, we did note that there was red, white and blue bunting strung between the beautiful old buildings. Definitely not Union Jacks. If you squinted they looked a bit like the French Tricolore, which pleased Joff, but on closer inspection the stripes were round the wrong way. So, definitely not in our honour.

We did celebrate our arrival with the now customary ice cream, sitting in the market square. Lush. Chocolate and a passion fruit and peach ripple. 

Here’s the square our hotel is in.

We’re in this lovely pink building. We had a quick sort though of our gear to see what we needed until we travel home on Sunday, bundled everything else into a rucksack, and set off to check that the car hadn’t been towed. Or destroyed in a controlled explosion. Or whatever. 

None of the above, of course, so we did a switcheroo, dumped boots and dirty stuff and picked up the clean stuff we had sensibly thought to bring for the next couple of days. Our planning wasn’t all that it might be, however, as neither of us really packed thinking about hot weather. Nice warm tank top, anyone? Note to self.

Anyhoo, we left the car where it was, as, understandably, parking in the old town is extremely limited, and hoofed it back to the hotel. A bit of downtime ensued before Joff took one for the team, and wandered off to find somewhere to fill the rucksack with local wine. To be clear, he didn’t rob a local citizen, he went to a shop. He’d added another couple of miles to his total by the time he’d got back. Hero status duly awarded. Yes, we could have driven to a supermarket. Let’s not investigate the reasons why that wasn’t desirable. You had to be there.

We decided on a Thai restaurant for dinner, which was tasty, and before that spent a pleasant hour or so having a cold one outside a Weinstube (pretty close to a pub), and mostly, if not entirely, avoiding yet more passive smoking.

Gratuitous, really, but how cute is this house?!

And so our final walking day has come to an end. The Neckarsteig is done. Tomorrow is our final day before travelling home. It’s gone really fast!

Em x