Singing in the Rhein, just singing in the Rhein...

Ok, so that was a crap title, but whatever!

2 weekends ago Bel and I were planning on going rock climbing (indoor) on the Saturday until Bel managed to get us invited to go on a 20km day walk / hike along the Rhein (big river). The Rheinsteig is a hike that runs along the Rhein from Wiesbaden (the capital of Hessen) to Bonn (the old capital of West Germany), through winefields and past castles, for a total distance of 320km. We decided that 300km of it was complete crap (kidding), so opted for the 17-or-so km from Östrich-Winkel to Rüdesheim (toursit Mecca of the Rhein).

Shiny web

Misty hikers

Foggy God of Wine

If I had have got my act into gear, I could have downloaded the GPS information for the trail that we were going to follow...but I didn't. So instead we relied on a book that we had of the trail, looking for little Rheinsteig stickers stuck to things, and keying in key points along the way on our GPS. All in all it was pretty successful.

Unfortunately the weather didn't really want to play along with our plans. We ended up with a fairly cold day (good for hiking) that was really foggy (bad for the view, which is supposed to be magical). But luckily it didn't rain along the way.
After conquering the 17km trail we sat and had coffee and cake in Rüdesheim before catching the train back to where we had parked our car...or so we thought. We got into the train which proceeded to stop at the next stop, and then skip ours and the next one, before stopping way to far away for us to walk back. Luckily there was a bus at the station that was heading back to Östrich-Winkel, and the bus driver let us ride back with them at no extra cost.
All in all we had a great day, and I would recommend it to anyone who ever gets the crazy idea of "going for a 20km walk" in their heads. :)

Tschüß,
Brushy.