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Journal: |
After talking with my hosts until after 9:30pm last night, I was
up late catching up on email and writing my journal when disaster
struck and I accidentally deleted the fourteen photos I had taken
for the day. I thought I had a foolproof backup method that
minimised effort, but I managed to find a single point of failure
and deleted what I had online and on my hard disk in one
irretrievable key-stroke. I was very annoyed with myself.
At least it was a relatively quiet day scenery-wise, but I did lose
a couple of goodies. Changed procedures from now on.
Anyway, I got up at 7am and tried to make a good job of my one-page
handwritten entry in my hosts' Pilgrims log-book before packing and
then eating breakfast at 8am. I left about 9am, with a big hug
from Dorli. Their daughter, Andrea, had even phoned while we
were having breakfast to wish me good hiking. We had all got
on very well together considering we had just met and didn't share a
common language. Fredi insisted on walking me back to
Jakobsweg on what was a beautiful morning despite a forecast of
rain. He pointed out Hornli, the mountain I would be going
over later in the day, far off in the distance.
The early
walking was mostly along country lanes and back roads passing by
milking sheds, dairies with little cheese shops, cows in fields
(with tinkling bells, of course) and going through historic (and
aromatic) farmyards and little villages. Along the way I found
a bakery to buy a filled roll to supplement the one Dorli had thrust
into my hand after breakfast, and an hour later, as the trail began
to climb away from the valley, I found a nice picnic table in a
small wood to enjoy lunch.
From there, it was a fairly solid
climb along minor roads, farm tracks and some single-track up to the
top of Hornli (1133m) which I reached around 3pm. After
clouding over with some light rain before lunch, the sun was now
blazing down and it was a sweaty climb. There was a cafe at
the top and, after admiring the spectacular views to the south and
east, including some snow-capped ranges I will be hiking through
next week, I rewarded myself with an ice-cream and Coke.
Before descending, I chatted for a while with a Swiss couple I had
passed on the way up who were out for a five-day hike along
Jakobsweg as a trial run for maybe following Jakobsweg across France
next year. The female seemed very keen, but I got the
impression her male partner was not so convinced that this was the
life for him.
From Hornli I could see in the distance the
village of Fischertal where I knew there was a Gasthaus which was my
target for the day. The descent down Hornli wasn't too
difficult and provided great views the whole way to the village of
Steg. Then it was a less-than-exciting walk along the side of
a main road to Fischertal. One thing that I had noticed all
day was the number of road cyclists and mountain-bikers out riding
on the trails and roads and there were still plenty to see in this
last 4km, some looking very fit and serious.
I arrived at
Gasthaus Blume soon after 5pm as large drops of rain began to fall
and was given a room where I turned the TV on and managed to see the
last few games of Sam Stosur's French Open semi-final choke/defeat.
I felt very sorry for her. After a shower and washing out my
sweaty clothes, I had a brief walk around town before ordering one
of the two dinner choices at the Gasthaus. At 8pm, knowing
that the Oslo Bislett track meeting was on this evening, I
channel-surfed without much hope of success, until I was lucky
enough to find a French broadcast and am typing this with frequent
interruptions to watch some of the exciting and very high quality
events. Outside, there is thunder and heavy rain and I saw a
severe weather warning on CNN International for this area tomorrow
with thunderstorms, heavy rain and possible tornadoes!
Fortunately, although I hope to cover a fair distance tomorrow, I
don't have to go too high.
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