This stage takes you mostly along and through Luxembourg’s grape fields. Except for the last few kilometers, there are many, but never long, ascents and descents with little shade and stunning views of the Moselle Valley. The last flat kilometers run through Germany into France and end in the picturesque village Sierck-Les-Bains.
Miraculously the tent is dry this morning, despite last night’s downpour. That does help to leave nice and quickly, because today will be a special day. Not only because it is Mother’s Day, but also because after 15 hiking days and 333 ⅔ kilometers on foot, we will reach France! But before that, we will cross some Luxembourg hills and grape fields.
We walk out of Remich, which so bustling last night, but sleepy on Sunday morning and start our first climb into the fields. We find that ascending is getting easier and easier, and the muscles are starting to get used to what we are “throwing at them.” Mile after mile we walk in the sunshine through the vineyards, with one beautiful view of the Moselle Valley after another. Halfway through, we make a break in Schengen, the last Luxembourg village before the border. We enjoy a cup of coffee on the quayside and Mark figures out the route some more on his phone. He sees that the bridge over the Moselle over which we leave Luxembourg is 230 meters away. But alas, the GR5 still runs over 2 steep hills and only after a few kilometers will we end up 230 meters away. But we wouldn’t have wanted to miss those kilometers; the last few stretches we still enjoy the Luxembourg countryside. We descend and a little later arrive on the other side of the bridge on the quay, where a nice little market and festivities are going on. It is a festival of the three border villages of Schengen, Perl and Sierck-les- Bains. Here we are, at the border triangle of Luxembourg, Germany and France, and the bridge over the Mosel leads us through a small stretch (+/-1km) through Germany right into France. Crossing the French border does feel special to us. We finally arrived on foot in the country where we have vacationed for so many years and where we will spend the next few months! Only one more border to go: the Swizz border thar we cross a few times in the Jura. But most of the trail will pass trough France.
We walk along the Moselle into Sierck-les-Bains. There we pitch our tent on the village’s Municipal campground. We chat with other hikers, but soon must flee into the tent because it starts to rain. The only thing we’ll leave our tent for today, is to take a shower and get a bite to eat. Tomorrow we will stay over to see the village and then Part 3 will begin!
In that part we will walk in about 12 stages through northern France, via Metz, above Nancy, into the Vosges Mountains. It will be very different from the Ardennes, we have mostly seen so far.
We are curious what it’ll be like… Luxembourg has certainly set the bar high!
