A cold day in the Odenwald

Our cycle club in the form of the section where we were formerly members: Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrradclub Kreis Bergstraße organises excellent walks every winter. Today we met in Bensheim and went by car up to Neunkirchen, a hamlet in the Odenwald. We set up carpools to cut down the environmental impact. In Neunkirchen we walked through knee deep snow over the Germannshöhe via Freiheit (Freedom) to the hamlet of Winterkasten. We ate well in the Raupenstein Guesthouse and then set off along the local road to climb through sticky rather unpleasant snow over Raupenstein Hill. We followed the border between Heppenheim and Bensheim through a the forest on an unmarked way. Fortunately the snow was deep enough that we could follow the tracks of others. From Schleichenhöhe we followed the red square route to the foot of the Kaiserturm, before turning off left to skirt the Neunkirchener Höhe and reach Neunkirchen once more. We had the obligatory Kaffee und Kuchen in the Höhenhaus restaurant, before returning to Bensheim. A four hour 14 km walk with about 400 m climbing and several million calories. An excellent day.

Bad Bergzabern to Wissembourg

The "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like" fountain in Bad Bergzabern

On an earlier attempt the weather was much clearer.

Meanwhile we haven't got too far with our winter walking aim of doing the Weinsteig Trail along the W edge of the Rhine Valley 10 to 14 km sections at a time - the weather has mostly just been too nasty and unsettled. However yesterday buoyed falsely by the weather forecast - cloudy, cold but mostly dry - we headed out by local train to Bad Bergzabern, a wine growing centre and spa towards the southern end of the Weinstraße. 

The stylised bunch of green grapes waymarks the trail.

As one does we've promised to lead a group from our cycling club on 17th March, along this section. As the time does go faster apparently or more slowly somehow we were beginning to run out of days when we could take another dry run at this - looming up are dentist visits, museum trips, other walks, retirement parties, visiting friends recovering from hospital and all the other activities that take time, and that is even before one of us has laid a foot in the garden apart from taking the compost out. Clearly the weather gods over in Rheinland Pfalz had not received yesterday's SW Germany's weather forecast since it was snowing almost the whole day with a wind direct from the Urals, but calling on the spirits of Shackleton and Shipton we marched on, meeting just one youth and a rather roly poly sausage dog underway. We ate our sandwiches rather quickly, sheltering behind a log pile and then hastening through some blasted vines (surely these withered sprouts will never produce Riesling, as the notices proclaimed) and then into the shelter of the woods where great fallen trees rubbed against other branches with unearthly squeaks. A buzzard flew silently past and later a kestrel hovered yards away and then swooped on a tiny mouse, enough for a few minutes of tearing apart on the fence post across the fields.
We had climbed through vineyards and forest to Dörrenbach,  dropped through Oberrotterbach and climbed to a ridge before we had a our first view of the the Weintor. It was probably one of the coldest walks I've ever done, though neither of us was ever cold for more than a few minutes, well protected by high tech layers as we were. We reached Wissembourg, just over the French border, following the wine route to its close on the German side via the Weintor, a totally pointless and brutalist style gateway, built in the time of the late, unlamented NS.
Rather than walk down the footpath by the side of the main road from Schweigen into Wissembourg, we turned off right by the large restaurant by the roundabout south of the Weintor. There we discovered a whole set of small vintners and interesting looking family style hotels and eateries - mostly closed for the winter.   Five minutes later we crossed the French border on foot, reached the outer suburbs of Wissembourg after two kilometres, climbed over the remains of the earth ramparts into town past the protestant church. We wandered into town past a house where Charles de Foucauld, a French mystic and missionary amongst the Touregs in Algeria had spent his early years and also past a house formerly belonging to the Bartholdi family. One member of this family was Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi who designed the Statue of Liberty. Interestingly enough there are plaques on various houses with information about them in French, German and English. The French appear to receive the most information, the Germans somewhat less and the British very little. Maybe the city fathers of Wissembourg think  English speakers are less than interested in European history.
In Wissembourg too some of our favourite watering holes were closed but promising to reopen before March 17th, when we may indulge in cafe au lait and mille feuilles after we have guided the walking cyclists to this paradise for pastry freaks (These delights are not available in Viernheim, fortunately).  We had time to nip into a supermarket to buy some cheese and then we took the train home. A good day.