Weather:☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪🥪 (5 out 5, great burrata sandwich at Cafe Louise in Auerbach.)
Milestone: We crossed E1 today, the ERA’s north – south trail
Track: 🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪🇩🇪 (4 out of 5, pretty trail through fields, villages and forest with great views. A bit of everything today)
Campsite: ⛺⛺⛺ (3 out of 5, nice flat spot in the forest)
Name of followed trail: Vier Länden weg, yellow square 🟨
We start today (after a good cup of tea) with crossing another highway and walk the first 10 km trough the fields to Auerbach. We see the hills of the Odenwald coming closer with every step.
In Auerbach we find a great breakfast and lunch cafe, cafe Louise. It’s the best sandwich we’ve had in weeks 😍. Friendly place, good food and a nice place to sit. It took us some time to leave again…😅
From here it goes up into the Odenwald, quite steep too! The views absolutely make up for the steep climb. It’s beautiful up here and we can see all the way to Dannenfels.
We walk past a church that is made out of different kinds of bark. Oak, birch, … pretty cool! We also walk through the vineyards of the Bergstraße region, so many wine regions I don’t know about…🤔😅
On our way we see an information board about the E8! This is the first explanatory tekst we’ve seen so far. Thank you Odenwald club for making it!
A few kilometers later, we cross the E1 in Lautertal, where we have a drink at a cafe. From there we go up the hill towards the Neunkirchen Höhe. Half way we pass through the village of Gadernheim, where we fill water at a kebap restaurant. Before we do, we order a pide. The pides are freshly baked and twice as large as expected, so again, no couscous tonight 😅.
With full packs and stomachs we walk the last 3 km up the hill to the Kaiserturm on top of the Neunkirchen Höhe. We sit down here to cool down and dry.
A cyclist comes up to us, asking if we’ve seen his friends pass already. We haven’t, so we have a chat with the man. He tells us he cycles up the hill every Friday, and has done so for more than 30 years!
When he hears about our journey, he offers us a bed, and a lift to get there. It’s really sweet, but too unpractical to make it work. What a great offer though, from a man we met 3 minutes ago. When you read this, thank you again!
We look for a good spot for the tent a bit down the hill and put the outer tent on to be on the safe side when rain does come. The weather will turn here too, probably tomorrow evening. But you never know!For now, we have a half open tent; best of both worlds.