Weather: 🌤️⛅☁️☁️⛅
Lunch: 🥪🥪🥪🥪 (4 out 5, great (slightly late) lunch from the farm shop in Retz)
Track: 🇦🇹🇦🇹🇦🇹🇦🇹 (4 out of 5, beautiful rocky trail along the river followed by an easy track through the forest)
Hotel: 🛌🛌🛌 (3 out of 5, spacious room in the city centre)
Name of followed trail: Grenzlandweg (607)
We wake up quite refreshed. After breakfast we first walk across the bridge and try to comprehend what it has been like with the Iron Curtain in place. The bridge was there, but the deck was taken off, so no one could cross it. So close, yet so far away.
We leave this part of human history and go back into nature, walking along the rocky Thaya banks. It’s a beautiful trail today, taking us across a ridge where the Thaya makes an almost complete 360 bend. Down again the trail becomes wider and takes us further through the forest towards Retz, capital of the Weinviertel. We have a short day today, because we want to visit the wine cellars in Retz. only a few kilometers before Retz we see the first vineyards. From there we walk towards the city and get to our hotel.
Mark still isn’t feeling completely fit yet, so I get us lunch from the village farm shop and after that we have time to relax. We go on a tour through the cellars of Retz. Since the city is build on what once was sea, they have compact sand under the houses of the city. This sand makes it very easy to dig cellars. And so they did for centuries. Sometimes even 3 floors deep! The tour included some fun and interesting stories about wine and Retz. At the end of the tour we have a wine tasting and go back to our hotel across the street. It was a really cool tour, worth our 3 long hiking days so we could ‘take the afternoon off’ 😅.
Mark is done for today, so I get a take away meal for us. After this, he goes to bed. Hopefully he feels better tomorrow.