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Well, how about that? A day without rain and a forecast without rain as well! And Internet / Email access, and a day off tomorrow!! All is once more well with the world.
And as usual when I say something like that, I have to add various caveats:
o the weather forecast is calling for a heat-wave, with valley temperatures reaching 35C in Switzerland (where, by the way, we will be in four days time, and we can already see it on the other side of the Rhine!). This will present its own problems and I wonder how long it will be until we are praying for rain and cold temperatures?
o Russell seems to have developed double Morton's Neuroma: we hope he can find a maker of orthopaedic shoe inserts tomorrow (Friday) who can produce them for him before we leave on Saturday morning.
But otherwise things are pretty good.
We had a hike of a different type today: through settings more reminiscent of English countryside (or, of course, of Romanian countryside :-), at least until you looked up from your immediate surroundings to the towering mountains all around. Fields and pastures, orchards and paddocks -- all very bucolic.
We set off around 8:30 and arrived about 3:15 (having taken a little more than an hour for an excellent lunch in a restaurant called the Roemerstube just outside of the village of Sateins), so the day was just about as planned.
It started off cloudy and cool but warmed up and the sun came out for ever longer stretches as the day wore on. I spent several hours listening to (and singing to... which may have something to do with the distance my hiking partners kept from me today) music on my sunglasses, for the first time while walking (I hadn't done it before because either there were fresh guest-hikers with whom to talk, or else because it was raining or threatening to rain). A nice moment came on the descent into Schniflis (great name) when the music was interrupted by a phone call: it was Lidia and we then talked as I walked.
The hotel we are at in Feldkirch is nothing special, but it was the best I could get at short notice: apparently there is an international gymnastics competition here right now (with participants of all ages from 55 countries) and so I was lucky to get any rooms at all. And, after all, it is clean and dry, so there is nothing to complain about.
As we get further and further away from Munich people we tell about our trip are getting more and more incredulous. That coupled with the fact that Feldkirch is the last place we will stay in Austria, and that we can see Switzerland already, and probably also influenced by the terrible weather conditions we have come through, have resulted in me finally feeling like the hike has truly begun. We have, in fact, now done about 20% of the way; still 74 stages to go!
For some of the day the paths we went along were marked upon the map as being part of that celebrated pilgrimage route the Jakobsweg (Path of Saint James). Interestingly, there were no signs of any kind on the ground to let pilgrims know where to go (whereas hikers need constant reassurance, it seems as if for pilgrims faith suffices). The only indications that a given path was on the Jakobsweg were an occasional Jesus on the Cross and the odd small chapel. However, since you can see those all over the place anyway, the indication was even more subtle: it was only the increased frequency with which the crosses and chapels appeared that testified to the path of pilgrimage.
We agreed that we were pleased to be on the H2H rather than the Jakobsweg for a couple of reasons:
o Firstly, we really appreciate the signs and trail-making and -maintenance work that help us hikers stay confident that we are on the right path.
o Secondly, walking 30k / day on the flat, which is apparently fairly typical for pilgrims, would absolutely kill our feet. After a mere 20k Russell felt unable to move from a horizontal position for more than two hours! Stop press: Russ would like you to know that "he is not a pussy" -- his feet are really killing him -- but he has good news: he found a maker of orthotics and should get a pair tomorrow -- perhaps they will help.
Tonight we'll see if we can find a decent pizza place for dinner: no haute cuisine for us today, just quick service so we can come back to the hotel, get horizontal, and go to sleep early. Tomorrow, however, our free day, is another question: there is a promising looking place on the Marktstrasse...
