Another long day – 29 km in the guidebook, 32 according to my Garmin – marred by an unfortunate incident.
The breakfast at the Villa Junghans was worthy of the rest of the stay and I set off at around 8:45 AM, heading back down to the town through the beautiful park. As it was Ascension Day, the place was deserted and everywhere closed. There would be no cake at the end of the trail today!
The weather was glorious again and I felt great as I climbed up out of Schramberg at 400 metres through a blend of fields and woods, passing a number of beautiful old farms, to reach an altitude of between 700 and 800 metres for the rest of the day.
A lot of the day’s walking was on surfaced roads, none of them very busy but tiring after a while. At one point, a hare came bounding down the road in my direction. I must have had the breeze blowing towards me as it didn’t spot me until the very last second, froze, looked perplexed and then ran off.
Shortly after, the trail passed a farm at an old mill, the Muckenmühle, with sheep, noisy geese and even a couple of peacocks, before reaching the ruined castle at Waldau. It returned to the woods for a while before entering the spa town of Königsfeld, passing the home of Albert Schweitzer.
Königsfeld was a quiet and pretty town, with a Kneipp bath right by the trail in the kurpark. I took a long and restful stop there at around 12:45, eating a couple of energy bars and a pack of beef jerky that one of my daughters had given me the previous Christmas.
After Königsfeld, there was more tarmac and woods before the small town of Möchweiler, which left no impression at all, apart from the fact that it was a pain to cross. From there, the trail entered some beautiful woods that it would follow all the way to Villingen, the end of the day’s stage.
It was around this time that I began to feel a little odd, as if I wanted to belch but couldn’t. And then, all of a sudden, in the glorious woods above the Groppertal valley, I started to throw up! It all came back – the beef jerky, the cereal bars and the water I had drunk! It was pretty spectacular and a passing hiker stopped to ask if I needed help. I told him I thought I’d be okay, so he advised me to go and rest at a forest spring a short distance ahead. I have no idea what caused the problem, but I suspect that the beef jerky pack may not have been correctly sealed. In any case, it left me feeling pretty drained. The spring water stayed down but, when I moved on, I felt exhausted and the last 5 kilometres into Villingen seemed to take forever as I had to keep stopping to rest. As soon as I got to the hotel at 6 PM, I threw up one more time, then went straight to bed and tried to sleep it off.
When I woke at 8 the next morning, after sleeping 14 hours, I felt a little better, but the previous day’s incident had left me feeling pretty fragile and I couldn’t really face the 35-km hike that was needed to get me to Geisingen where I would be sleeping that night (the lack of available accommodation meant that I had grouped two stages of the trail for that day). Fortunately, from Villingen, I could get a train, via Donaueschingen, to Geisingen, one of the few places along the trail where this was possible. I did consider doing the first 17 km to Sunthausen but wasn’t sure there was a bus to take me the rest of the way. So I opted for the most reasonable solution given the state I was in.
As I’d barely opened the pack before crashing out the previous evening, the morning’s preparations took me no time at all and I set off at around 8:20 for the centre of Villingen where the huge weekly market was setting up. I went for breakfast at a place that I had spotted online. I managed to bag one of the few remaining outside tables on a rather chilly morning (all the inside tables were taken). It was clearly the place to be in Villingen and served up delicious scrambled eggs with a couple of cappuccinos that I managed to digest without any problem. The previous day’s upset was clearly over and the world seemed a better place.
I wandered around the town’s charming centre for a while, stocked up on a few supplies for the days ahead and then went to the station where I took the 11:06 train to Donaueschingen, a 12-minute ride.
Donaueschingen was less charming than Villingen. Its claim to fame is the “source” of the Danube, a very underwhelming ornamental pool in the town centre that is a major tourist attraction. I had seen an alternative source three years earlier, high up on the Westweg, that seemed a much likelier (and more romantic) origin for such a mighty river.
I wandered around the fairly unlovely centre for a while, then went for lunch at the Fürstenberg brewery where I had some delicious and visibly homemade maultaschen served by a charming and feisty waitress.
At 2:21 PM, I took the train for the 9-minute ride to Geisingen. This tiny town had a huge competitive skating arena, both indoor and outdoor, and that was where I had to go to pick up my key and pay. My room, in the nearby Villa Arena, was very basic but comfortable and perfect for my needs.
After another long sleep to get over the previous day, I went out for dinner at around 6:30. After trying an Italian place where the owner, after sitting me at a table, started chatting to friends and never bothered to give me a menu (I left after 20 minutes), I ended up in the local Asian restaurant for a tasty and very cheap meal.
The next day, my ninth (or rather eighth) on the Ostweg, I was back on the trail and felt pretty good when I left the hotel at around 7:15 in the morning. I picked up two croissants and an espresso from the bakery across the street and breakfasted on the church square. It was a glorious morning, cool and sunny, ideal conditions for a day with less forest and mostly meadows (where my hay fever kicked in from time to time).
The trail went up and down a lot, starting from Geisiningen at 667 metres, then leading to the top of the Wartenberg at 825 metres before descending to Gutmadingen (where I had another close encounter with a hare) and then heading up again to 904 metres at the Kuhberg. From there, it was a gentle climb through wood-lined meadows to the highest point on the Ostweg, the Schlossallee Hutte at 915 metres.
The trail then descended to Hondingen where a shady bench just outside the village provided the perfect place to stop. By this point, I had already done 13 of the 20 kilometres required to reach Blumberg and it wasn’t even 11 o’clock. So I took a good long rest for once.
From Hondingen, I headed uphill again through more meadows, passing a very beautiful crucifix.
The trail continued through the meadows before passing under a busy road and heading uphill into the woods above Blumberg. These woods were a welcome change after all the open farmland. After passing the Panorama swimming pool in the hills above Blumberg, I headed down into the rather plain and almost ugly little town, finding my way to the stop for the bus to Epfenhofen where I was booked in for the night as I hadn’t been able to find anywhere to stay in Blumberg or Achdorf (the next village along the trail).
I needed to wait one hour and forty minutes for the bus, but as Komoot came up with a 40-minute itinerary to the hotel, I decided to walk there (a wise decision as I never saw the bus pass the hotel later that afternoon). It was a pretty easy walk, although I suffered a bit with all the pollen coming off the fields. I took my time, stopping at a couple of benches to take in the view of the steam railway line below and making sure that I wouldn’t arrive too early.
After passing under the rather spectacular railway viaduct, I reached the village and the hotel at around 3 PM.
The place was deserted and, on checking Booking.com, I saw the check-in time was 5 PM! So I sat down on a sunny bench to wait, content at having finished my 23 km so early. Fortunately, a couple of other hikers turned up at around 4 o’clock and managed to find someone so I made the most of it to check in with them and grab a beer before a great dinner of stuffed veal breast that rounded off the day nicely.
Footsteps 