Di awoke with a killer head-ache right across the brow. The upside, if migraine has such, was a perfect blue sky, a few small puffs of white and the hope of a fair days walking in the footsteps of Albert Schweitzer (born in Kayserburg).
We took our time getting ready, to give Di’s magic pills the best chance of kicking in and reflected that a bottle of red plus an almond brandy on top of a couple of kilos of stewed beef with potatoes possibly wasn’t the best option for good head-health. But hey, energy for the walk right?
We rose up quickly from the village of Kayserburg (236m) with views out over the vineyards and castle. On this side of the valley there were petite farms each with their small tracts under vine, a beautiful white blossom and a chook or two.
Di hadn’t eaten at breakfast so we stopped after an hour or so for a brief repast of baguette and croissant that I’d saved from the morning. Sadly I’d eaten the meat, cheese, yogurt and berries and long since washed them down with two cafe Au laits (had to do something while I was waiting).
Schweitzer’s trail took us up and up from farmland into deepening forest; dark green yew, mountain pine, silver fir and larch, starkly contrasting with the brighter limes of hazel and hornbeam lit up with the morning sun. Fortunately the magic pills were taking their affect as we rose up some 500m. Sadly Di’s toe was giving her some curry, in boots, on the steep, so I provided some encouragement from the very words of Mr Schweitzer;
“There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.” This proved less effective than the good doctor’s fame might have suggested and I found myself resorting to other more well tread modes of encouragement:
“This is the short leg, it should be easy”, “look, I think that’s a larch”, “was that a woodpecker?” etc, These also, strangely, did little to satiate the pain of Di’s now throbbing head and toe so I went for my last ditch, never fail option; a happily whistled rendition of Henry Mancini’s baby elephant walk. Only the sudden appearance of the village of Labaroche cooled the rapidly increasing tension that ensued.
“Look, there’s Labaroche!” said I. And riding the wave of adrenaline that comes with the end of a long, hard journey added, “I’ve booked a great place right near where the trail comes into to town.”……
There are those times in your life when you look back, and, in hindsight, laugh at the difficulties of the distant past. This was not one of those moments. On a flat ‘google’ map, the hotel I’d chosen was but a biscuit toss from the town’s centre. In fact, as my topographic map would have shown me if I’d bothered to look at it, the land plummeted away some 300m down to our hotel far below.
“‘wandering through sun drenched vineyards’, you said, ‘wine tasting over a long lunch’, you said”. Having lost 300m of our hard earned climb, tired and hungry, we finally reached l’hotel Montagne Verte (perhaps the name should have given it away). “Dinner?”, “Dinner? No, this is a bed and breakfast there is a restaurant in town but….”.
In the end it turned out well. Hermin, husband of the husband and wife bnb team, offered to drive us up to town for dinner. Hermin speaks no english and there was one tense moment when, after driving vertically up for ten minutes, and wondered how the hell we’d get home in the dark, Hermin mimed the “call me when your done and I’ll pick you up”, sequence. Beautiful.
We both had “five meats”, smoked ham, two types of sausage, beef, and a kind of silver side all laid on this mound of sauerkraut, the height of which would have given Tenzing Norgay a scare. Staggered out of Hermin’s van and into bed.