In which Sid and Doris have more hill walking exercise than intended.
Yesterday I said I expected a day of river based footling. I was wrong. Sid went for a run this morning, a not very convincing 10k even though all on the flat by the river. The fun on the run back was to keep ahead of a huge barge with 140+ shipping containers on it coming upstream. [OK I confess, I am the geek who counts the containers – D – Sid just runs past them.] The barges run all day and all night – 6mph upstream and at least 10mph downstream. Eventually the barge had midstream, tired Sid had the outside of the bend and was beaten in the last kilometre.
After inhaling the hotel breakfast the way hungry runners [and their companions] will we set off for the truly charming and never-updated 1950s chairlift to the “Hirschkop” local prominence for easy views of the mighty Rhine. We bought the one way ticket expecting an easy stroll down.
After a brief pause for Doris to master the “panorama” setting on the world’s best-travelled-but-worst-used iPhone camera, we consulted a map board.
Doris picked an innocuous-looking 5k route that wiggled across the hillside to the “Fesserhohe” and then back toward town.
Boys and girls, why would the path wiggle? Why are certain parts of the path going straight? First, the straight bits. These are vertical and people tackling these ladders all have twin karabiners attached to a climbing harness to catch them if they slip. And even if you were not concerned about falling, the route using the via ferrata, the Kletter Weg, is one way round – the way we are not going.
Let’s now tackle the wiggliness. If you cannot go straight up or down then you must go across country and the many steep contours. The 5k takes a vairy long time, the ‘descent’ takes in 600m of climb, and it is well into the afternoon by the time we get our ice cream ration.
We want this house.
A reminder of just how lovely German roofing is. Not quite a contender for the #kindnessandingenuity awards, but very nice to contemplate.
Usefully, the cuckoo-clock centre had a hand-written note on the outside of the (closed) door that said in German: Warning! The owner of this shop is an idiot and a thief!
Perhaps the note should also have added “The owner of this shop doesn’t check his front door very often” although maybe that was unnecessary.
On the way home we wipe birdy poop off Hermann’s bonnet – this is his first time outdoors on the entire trip and the local sparrow population have shown their sincere appreciation – and give him what should be his last oil and water before home. A passer by is keen to join in and holds the oil funnel. As his wife says: ‘If a bonnet is open he has to look in.’ Good man.
Hermann is actually under the trees on the river bank so we are fortunate that the Rhine does not seem to be having one of its many floods.
We have elected for full on, table cloth dining so naturally are now in our sitting room stoking up on gin and nuts before walking along to the elegant Art Nouveau room. Another busy day on the Epic Covid Tour.