Mission accomplished

 

Our final day in Germany. Round-up stats of our Neckarsteig adventure for the benefit of the resident nerd (me): 9 stages, 89.92 miles (longer than the official route due to many detours, doubling-back and inevitable GPS error), 215,014 steps and total elevation gain of 14,185 feet (or 3.21 Ben Nevises).

Bad Wimpfen is an exceptional heritage town, with an unbelievable array of Fachwerkhaüser (half timbered houses) in all colours and sizes and shapes, and knockout mediaeval towers and stone gates.

Despite this being officially a rest day, our first meaningful act of the morning was to climb the 167 steps of the Blauer Turm, to access a panoramic vista over the town’s higgledy-piggledy patchwork of roofs and out to the wider locality.

You can get a real sense of where, over the millennia, the Neckar river eventually ceased to gouge out its narrow, winding corridor through the chalk and sandstone hills before silting over a broad floodplain. In the photo below, you can spot Horneck castle in the distance, where we stayed the previous night, and the river path to BW.

After a pleasant, random mooch through the streets of BW, we took our swimming togs to the Solebad, a mineral pool which doubles as a sanatorium, for 3 hours or so of total immersion and wrinklage, alternating with a couple of stints in the steam room, and some judicious application of the pressure jets on weary limbs. 

The facility, which has both an outdoor and indoor pool, was busy, mostly senior citizens shooting the breeze with friends and enjoying a relaxing float in the briny baths. The mineral-rich water is heated to around 32 degrees, and felt incredibly buoyant, to the extent that our normal gravitational weight seemed to have doubled on getting out.

As we were passing by the gelateria, it felt only right and proper that we should taste a valedictory double-scoop, to say goodbye to Germany and to the last rays of summer. Em even let me have a lick of one of them this time.

In the evening, we booked into an Italian restaurant that specialises in Argentinian steak, go figure. I indulged, when in Buenos Aires etc, and Em had the perch-pike fillet in a delicious lemon sauce. Interestingly, the terminology for rare steak here is Englisch, instead of blütig as you might expect. Not sure of the historical reasons for this, so speculation is invited.

We capped off the day by attending a free concert put on by the Evangelisches Stadtkirche, to a programme combining the town’s choral society and an organist. The music was on the heavy, formal baroque/ early classical side, which is not exactly to our taste, but the quality of the singing was excellent, as were the acoustics and interior. Inevitably the Pfarrer (reverend) took the occasion as a recruitment opportunity to boost the church’s following, with a couple of readings that were mercifully unintelligible in German.

At this point, we must sign off, with nothing more exciting to look forward to tomorrow than a dash across Northern France to get to our Eurotunnel crossing, and then onwards to Taunton. I’ve no doubt that Jack will be slaving all day to make the place presentable for our home-coming.

Prosit und Auf Wiedersehen, pets!

Joff x