The Oster Valley in the Odenwald, Germany

We left Bensheim by car in carpool and drove up to Reichelsheim. We turned off right by a bakers and climbed the Krautweg to the car park at Teufelstein. We got out the car into a window that came straight from Greenland via Siberia. It was cold. We climbed south and soon found shelter in the woods, thank goodness! We dropped into Unter Ostern, climbed through Rohrbach, Erzbach and Ober-Ostern to then drop to the Zum Ostertal country pub. We ate well and then worked off the lunch by climbing to the heights on the other side of the valley to return to our starting spot. We reckoned we'd walked 17 km by the end. It is possible to go to Reichelsheim even on Sundays by bus from Bensheim and there are return buses in the evening. The journey takes about 50 minutes. Check vrn.de for times.

The Weinsteig Part I Neuleiningen to Bad Dürkheim

The Weinsteig is a new trail that runs parallel to the Weinstraße on the western edge of the Rhine Valley from Neuleiningen near Grünstadt  to Wissembourg just over the border in France . It is a little more strenuous than the older Weinstraße trail.  We intended to walk the Weinsteig on cold clear days this winter, not in one fell swoop but on individual days.  We had just two days this winter which were not half bad when we walked the Weinstraße trail from Bad Bergszabern to Wissembourg to prepare a tour for a Mannheim club. Unfortunately the weather this winter was mainly wet and cold. so we have had to wait  for spring to start the walks.
We took public transport to the start and had a sense of an older more romantic Europe on Mannheim Hauptbahnhof (main station) when we saw the Copenhagen - Basel CityNightLine train with a sleeping car from Moscow. When the carriage left Moscow I am not too sure. In my early days as a commuter from Weinheim to Frankfurt I used to regularly see the Zürich - Moscow sleeper that  stopped in Weinheim with its coke stove heated Russian carriages three times a week. I always wanted to climb on board and drink tea from the samovar.
We took  less romantic regional trains and then a bus from Grünstadt up to Neuleiningen and walked into the village clustered around the partly ruined castle. It seems to be home to an amazing number of architects' houses and offices. We had the usual problem: The lack of signs. Any sign whether Weinsteig, Weinstraße, Drei Burgen (Three Castles)… all lead the same way. There are plenty of good looking pubs in the village. We dropped off the edge of the village and went through Neuleiningen Tal (valley) which is in the valley and then climbed up to Battenberg. The Weinstraße Trail went off to the left before the climb up to Battenberg became serious and so we only had three sets of markers, the red and white Weinsteig sign, a Pfalzer Waldverein sign consisting of a white and a blue horizontal strip and the  Drei Burgen to follow. We wandered off to the right to look at the Blitzrohren - tubes of iron oxides originally laid down horizontally and then shifted vertically as the rift valley was formed. 

We followed a track through the forest slight up and down but climbing all the time. Hill walking is different to cycling. When cycling one looks for short steep climbs where one can push, but not for long followed by a long gentle descent, whereas walkers prefer the reverse.
We visited the Bismark Tower, wandered past the Celtic wall and descended very steeply past the Roman quarry with its ancient graffiti to arrive on the outer edges of Bad Dürkheim. We found our way in to the centre of the town, more by good luck that judgement and found a café to eat the celebratory cake. There were few signs.
The next problem we faced was how we got out of the town, but enquired of a native and managed to find the tram station by the DB railway station to head for home.

Self-guided Walking Holidays in Germany

We visited the Mannheim Travel Fair early in the new year and picked a brochure from Kleins Wanderreisen. The company offers self-guided tours with luggage transfer all over Germany. Their website is partly in English. We have booked a walk through the southern Black Forest gorges later in the year. I am impressed by their attention to detail. There is a Stadtfest, i.e. a jolly event but obviously fairly noisy in one of the villages we are due to visit. We were duly asked whether we were prepared to stay overnight there or did we wish to have two nights in one of the adjacent villages with taxi or bus transfer. We will report later about our experience.