Day 11 Alken to Treis-Karden, 18 km

I’m lying on my bed in a very simple gasthaus in Treis-Karden. Orange walks. Just had dinner downstairs. An old school local pub (ish). Smoking room! A group at the bar. A table of men playing cards. The overnight guests were the only ones eating.

I am loving the “mixed” salads - they are all different. Tonight’s had cucumber salad, cabbage salad, carrot salad, bean salad,and some dressed lettuce leaves. Really really really good.

The theme today was views. Walk way up and look out ! The Mosel River is not that big but is very busy. Tour boats. Working boats. But no canoes or kayaks, even today, a Sunday. Tons of people out walking though.

Today I had my first (after 10 days!) “are you walking alone?” discussion. The person asking was a woman, probably my age.

Apart from the views, the guidebook highlight of today’s walk was the Burg Eltz. Burg means fortress but this looked like a castle to me! It’s been in the same family for 900 years. You can look them up and see wedding photos of the newest Count.

It’s apparently one of the most famous castle -like things in Germany, and once upon a time was the image on the 500 deutsch mark bill. And today it was VERY popular. The path was full of people and there was a huge long line to get in, so we kept going.

I walked for a while this afternoon with Yvonne and Alex, whom I met yesterday. Nice to have company. It’s hard in this moment not to talk about political things. And a relief when the people you are talking with feel similarly. Their son has just started a sociology degree. I think they were happy to tell him they were walking with a real (more or less) sociologist.

The real highlight of the day came just before we started the very steep down to the last town. We came to the edge of the woods, and there was a bit of a clearing and a generator! You don’t really expect to see a generator somewhere up high in the forest. But then there was a path and we could see that it went out to where there was a great view, and then there was stuff that you would see in a kids’ play area. And then there was a kind of hut and then we could see all these people sitting around, in front of a spectacular view, drinking wine! Wine that probably came from grapes grown within 500 metres!

You could buy the wine in the hut. Or rather, you could donate for the wine in the hut - they were not allowed to sell it. So so so good. The wine. The people. The view. And the sun was actually out!!!! This is why a person buys a plane ticket to go for a walk.

I’m not sure that wine and steep downhills are a good combination but we got down okay. Alex and Yvonne’s guest house was the first place we came to. I walked about a half hour further through the village of Karden, across the river to Treis Karden and this gasthaus.

Tomorrow is 29 km with some serious elevation- and there will be rain. The dry was good while it lasted!Read more