Up at eight, breakfast with a book and slow internet. There’s a wooden sign on the kitchen counter saying ‘Sorry! No WI-FI, talk to each other and get drunk’. So if we want to look up info on a walk or the distance to a thing to see, we have to route it through a hotspot on one of our phones.
We decide to take the boat to a nearby village and then walk back here, should be about 10 km and easy, which is good for my knees. I make lunch – the same thing, we don’t tire of it – and set out on foot to catch the boat at eleven. It’s a great plan, but we didn’t count on the timetable being different on Fridays.. why Fridays.. ?! So we switch it around: we’ll walk to Schmidt and take the ferry back, no worries. Initially our path follows the shoreline of the Rursee. The Rur is the local river, not to be confused with the Ruhr further north! Since this is a dammed lake, the water level is very constant and there’s a decent, gravel foot path near the shore. The slopes are covered in old beech forest, providing a bit of shade, it’s beautiful.
Not too busy today, we encounter a few other hikers and also cyclists, a lot of Dutchmen with a dash of Flemish and a local with a dog now and then. The sky is blue, the still surface of the lake is blue, .. it’s a fine spring day. We leave the shoreline to climb up to the viewpoints near Schmidt village, about 150 m above the water level, so we have beautiful views of the lake and hills surrounding it.
We decide to hold off on lunch until we’re back in the forest, but then fail to find a dappled sun bench with a view. We’re not too hungry, so we can afford to be picky. From Schmidt we make our way back down to the lake shore and finally sit down for lunch around one o’clock. Arne has the brilliant idea to check when the ferry leaves exactly and we must rush to catch the 13:35 one or wait until 15:35. Rush it is, we make it just in time but then have to wait anyway, the boat is delayed by ten minutes or so. It’s actually quite a big ferry, with two enclosed decks with tables/benches and then some open air seating at the top. Quite a popular way of moving around for tourists, apparently, there’s even a short broadcast about Schwammenaue – where we’re docking next and where we’ll get off – and what to see, where to go from there.
We walk back to our appartment from the dock and have a relaxing afternoon. We reserve a table in a fancy restaurant nearby for this evening, talk about ponds, take a nap and a shower, .. true holiday style.
Febe writes 