In good weather an easy stage, but in rainy weather the paths become slippery and difficult to walk because of the mud. The route runs mostly through woodland and along fields, and has a few ascents and descents. The marking of the trail is sometimes missing.
We wake up in a real bed, instead of on an air mattress, and downstairs in the guest room, breakfast is waiting for us at 8:00 am. A jug of coffee, bread, croissants, yogurt and pastries and all kinds of toppings. Everything is homemade, even the jam, really delicious Perfect to start the day!
A little after nine we say goodbye to our hostess and hit the road again. We keep a brisk pace, because a lot of rain has been predicted for today. Last night there was quite a downpoor and it shows. The forest roads that are normally so easy to walk, have turned into slippery, muddy paths. It’s difficult to walk and you have to watch out; it’s easy to lose your balance with a big backpack… Soon we put on our ponchos to keep ourselves and our gear dry. These also prove to come in handy during the lunch break; with the hiking pole and one poncho, Mark creates a shelter in no time, so we can eat our sandwich in a dry place.
After the break, we soon lose the trail. We haven’t seen the white/red markings for a while and the navigation on our phone tells us to turn off at places where there is no path. We get stuck several times and walk back and forth looking for the right path. Eventually, the only possibility turns out to be following a strip of tall grass between two meadows, which is somewhat close to the route our phone indicates. No fun, since the grass is waist-high and soaking wet from all the rain….
After about 2 kilometers we finally reach a road, so we can walk to a village nearby where we can pick up the original route again.
No idea if it’s because we lost the trail, or because we had a pretty long stage yesterday, or maybe our hostess (sorry Laurie...) accidentally served us decaffeinated coffee, but our energy is really depleted now. The last 5km we plod on to the campsite, where fortunately we can pitch our tent dry. While recovering from the hike, it turns out that we both have several blisters after all. In Nancy we bought new shoes, which apparently need some running in. So around 6 p.m. we leave on our sandals for the village to get something to eat. But all the eateries turn out to be closed and the supermarket was also closed at noon, so we return to the tent empty-handed. Fortunately, we still have 4 slices of bread, 2 slices of cheese, a bouillon cube and a bag of taco seasoning, so we won’t have to go to bed with an empty stomach.
It was clearly not our best day today, but we did learn something again; always have a spare meal with you and on Mondays everything is closed!
Another nice milestone today though: we walked 555 kilometers from Heerlen!
