Day 26 of the Walk to the World Cup – JUNE 4th

Lahnstein to Singhofen – wandering on the WanderWegs

Another huge steak last night washed down by some excellent German beer – keep it going Wendy and Mick. This morning I walked into the breakfast room and it was like going into the Wild West saloon without my Stetson on – the room went absolutely quiet and every pair of eyes stared at me. Then I remembered I wasn’t in the coach party - the Berlin Over 80’s tour of Germany - and found my rightful place and all returned to normal.

Back to the walking. I had pondered last night when to leave the Rhine. Whenever, we turned east it would be a hard climb and the question was whether to walk alongside the river some more or go for the climb first thing. And…. we walked for another 4K along the river, saying ‘Morgen’ to everyone who passed and enjoying the moment. There was only Sandra and me and we both thought how much Tim would have enjoyed the trip – driving the camper van he so much wanted (for V concerts), walking himself strong again and enjoying being with his family, his uncles and cousins, his brother, dad and mum. We both shed some tears but I know he is keeping an eye on us and making sure we do a proper job of this.

So Braubach was the place where we turned inland and it proved to be a climb almost worthy of a decent hill. It started out very gradually and very slowly kept getting steeper and steeper. I found it hard to slow my pace as Sandra was with me and stopped every so often for her to catch up and for a quick chat before going ahead again. We were both pleased to see Phil and the van after 10K.

Today’s walk was a bit of a zig zag, there was no direct route and we now had to turn north to reach Schweighausen, but Phil spotted some shortcuts on our large-scale map and we saved some time before stopping for lunch after 20K. Walk three of the day was ‘off piste’, we were following footpaths and Sandra who was now driving went ahead to Singhofen where we expected to pass through an hour later. Instead we spent 2 hours finding our way down one side of a ravine, stopping every 5 minutes to check the route as we crossed another path and then into a ‘secret valley’. This one is so secret it could have survived the 30 Years War and WW2 without waking up. There is a very narrow entrance and then a stream that gurgled and talked to us as it gathered pace, heading north and meandering left and right. Right in the depths of the valley is a tiny Augustine Schule, reachable only via a 3 mile track over a very steep pass. At the head of the valley the stream snakes left then right through a gorge and into another tree-covered ravine. It was a long and tiring walk to get us not very far but I wouldn’t have missed it.

Sandra was almost as pleased to see us when we reached Singhofen as we were to see her and any thoughts of continuing had long since evaporated. It was a warm and bright afternoon and we drove back to Braubach following the river Lahn though Bad Elms so that Phil and Sam could pick up their hire car. They were heading back to Dortmund and from there to their home in Spain – a real flying visit but there support and company have been really appreciated.

Yellow jersey, walker of the day – Sandra – climbing like a mountain goat.

Distance covered – 19.3 miles. Total covered – 492.7 miles