Day 19 – 22.5 miles to Dasburg (Thu 17th)

My resupply parcel is on its way (thanks Kev/Nick). I emailed the recipient. Still OK, except no vacancies on my expected arrival Sat 26th. Can do Friday = hard work, or Sunday = too late. Have decided to go for the Friday.

This means I have to do 9 days of 19.2 miles. Today was not a hilly day, or so I thought, so I went for it. And the sun was out, although there was a biting north wind. Did 22.5 miles and rolled into camp at 6.30pm.

So now I have to do 8 days of 18.8 miles.

Finished Belgium today. They ended with a fine castle – so good they named the village after it. Burg-Reuland.

Then onto the EU monument at the border between Belgium, Luxemburg and Germany.

At this point I left Belgium, entered Luxemburg, and immediately lost the trail. Should have checked the guidebook more closely. So as not to be too conformist Luxemburg mark the trail with a yellow dot instead of red and white bars.

Then it was just a matter of following the river Our.

Looks quite benign, but the valley sides steepened, meaning a rollercoaster of up to get around a cliff then back down to the river, then back up, then down and so on.

Very tiring. Just checked tomorrow. That is the same, but with 4000ft of ascent shown in addition to any rollercoaster. I think tomorrow I am going to suffer for today’s exertions.

At the end of the day, it was a quick hop over the bridge over the river into Germany, where I am now camped.

Food woes continue. The shop I visited to get my resupply for 5 days was really a fishing shop with a grocery store added on. Had more choice of fish bait than food. Fizzy drinks and chocolate fine, tinned stuff some, otherwise a fairly meagre choice. I managed to get some vermicelli (I think it is anyway – very thin pasta that cooks in about 3 mins. Let me know if I got the wrong word!), tomato puree, dried hot dog sausage (yummy?) and some mustard sachets. A culinary masterpiece will follow.