Walking with luggage transfer along the Weinstraße, Rhineland Palatinate, Germany

We have walked and enjoyed several stages of the Weinsteig a slightly tougher version of the German Weinstraße route. The 165km long route starts just over the border from the French town of Wissembourg and proceeds along the edge of the hills bordering the Rhine to Neuleiningen through Neustadt an der Weinstraße and Bad Dürkheim. The excellent Kleins Wanderreisen offer a 14 day trip for just over €800 pp for two people sharing a room with bed and breakfast in hotels and vintners accommodation, with luggage transfer starting each Sunday. If you want to book your own accommodation Gepäckservice Pfalz will arrange luggage transfer for €20 for one or two persons.

The Weinsteig Part III Deidesheim to Neustadt a d Weinstreaße and disaster strikes.

We took the S-Bahn from Mannheim to Haßloch (Pfalz) and changed to bus 513 to Deidesheim. If you are tempted to take this route be warned: We had three minutes to get from the platform to the bus stop. We did not hang about and as soon as we sat down the bus was away.  We left Deidesheim station and took the Bahnhofstraße past the fountain in front of the Tourist Information Office. The fountain is worth five minutes of your time. You can take each others' photographs "wearing" bronze clothing and admire the goat with droppings and the mouse without. We picked up the yellow and red waymarkers showing the feeder route to the Weinsteig easily. We turned left at the end of the Bahnhofstraße to reach the Marktplatz, the square in front of the Deidesheimer Hof, a restaurant visited by the great and the good when Helmut Kohl was Federal Chancellor. However the restaurant still serves basic Pfälzer food like live dumplings, Saumagen (stuffed pigs stomach) and sauerkraut at reasonable prices. You can also eat a four course gourmet meal for €66 with a different wine for each course. We put ourselves out of temptation and took the Heumarktstraße on the far side of the town hall following the red and yellow waymakers. We passed the swimming baths and climbed through the vineyards towards the Pfalzblick, a restaurant. Along the way the markers changed colour to the familiar red and white squares. We walked along the edge of the forest overlooking the vineyards before dropping down into Gimmeldingen and then climbing back in to the forest into the Gimmeldingener Valley with its three guest houses. By Forsthaus Benjental, the last one we started the four kilometre up hill hike (300m) to the summit of Weinbiet hill. The path is not good and care was needed. The Pfälzer Wald Verein (Palatinate Forest Club) restaurant was shut. It was Friday and Ruhetag. Once away from the summit the wide smooth path dropped steadily and somewhere along here I tripped over my feet. I fell heavily, cut my knee and bruised my left side. I will take walking poles in future. Judith played the nurse and applied sticking plasters. I hobbled along dribbling blood on my trousers to the stone deer, a carving by whom we don't know.

There is a wet red spot on my right leg.
We climbed down the technically difficult section by Wolfsburg (the exposure is quite fierce) and took another waymarked feeder into Neustadt. We visited an Apotheke - a chemist's shop to buy plasters, a bakers for a cup of coffee and the station to catch the S-Bahn back to Mannheim.
The route is well waymarked and we did not use our guide or our map.

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.

Why fly to New England?

We have enjoyed a superb autumn/fall this year and if you wish to enjoy walking through golden woods with good food and wine, then it is worth thinking about southwest Germany in October. The photographs below were taken over the last month or so in the vineyards of Rhineland Palatinate, in the Löwensteiner Hills near Heilbronn, in the Odenwald and in the Viernheim forests.

Die Weinstraße

The Pfälzer Weinsteig (Palatinate Wine Trail runs for about 160 km (100 miles) from Neuleiningen to the Weintor at Schweigen-Rettenbach, just north of Wissembourg in Alsace. The route traverses the foothills of the Pfalzerwald (Palatine Forest) through vineyards, past castles and Ludwigshöhe, a Royal Bavarian summer residence. The climate is warm here in the summer with almond, fig and edible chestnut trees. This is a major German wine growing area. It is especially fine in October when the leaves on the grape vines change colour from deep green to yellow, orange and deep red. It is a bit late for this year, but next year maybe? You will need some time to sample the wine and the local food which is rural, robust and simple, but not to be missed - Saumagen (pigs' stomach stuffed with hotpot and then sliced and grilled or  fried. This is the favourite food of Helmut Kohl, the former German Chancellor.), liver dumplings, Bratwurst, sauerkraut… The trail can be easily walked in either direction in 10 days - about 16 km and 700 m, just 2000' a day. You can expect to pay about €80 a night for a double room with B&B. Practically every village has a wine festival in the autumn, so booking head has a lot to recommend it. The organisations whose websites follow will help you find rooms: www.deutsche-weinstrasse.de, www.suedlicheweinstrasse.de or www.pfaelzer-wanderwege.de for details of pre-booked holidays with luggage transport, allowing you to just carry a day sack with a picnic and a waterproof.