After packing, a quick trip to the supermarket for some bread and water, and walking back to the trail, it was 9.50 when I returned to my route. The nice forest continued, then passed a chateau. After that, I ended up in very beautiful scenery. They call this area La Petite Suisse, and it is because of this landscape that I wanted to travel through Luxemburg on my way to Rome.
I had to share the first part of this most beautiful stretch with an entire highschool class, which was unfortunate; but walking slightly faster and not stopping so much to enjoy the views kept me ahead of them. And once I lost them I could take my time looking around.
One unfortunate part of the morning was that I tired very quickly. I think my bag was a bit too heavy (with an extra liter of water, because there were no refill opportunities until Echternach), and that took a lot of energy.
So I drank a lot of water, ate some food, and adjusted the weight distribution a bit, and that helped.
Forgot to mention: the day started out very bright and sunny, which was great. By the afternoon it was clouded over again, but I really enjoyed the sunshine this morning.
Then, after crossing a road, then going back into the forest, I got to a very rocky bit of Petite Suisse, with 'gorges', like small canyons, a lot of going up and down, and a big climbing area which was almost overflowing with climbers. As I used to rock climb myself, it was quite fun to see, but it did impede progress; and then there were loads of other hikers, lots of families, people with dogs, people staring at the climbers, and with the narrow paths everyone coming down from the opposite direction took some time to pass, as I had to wait for them often. It was rather weird to suddenly be walking on such a busy path, when I'm mostly used to only occasionally meeting someone. Once I got past the climbing area, it got better. Turns out it's Luxemburg's most popular climbing area, and apparently it was a very popular day to go climbing.
I came upon a sign saying a bit of a trail was partly closed and to please take the detour; but as I didn't want to lose the route and the sign didn't say the road was barred, I ignored it and just followed the marking. That path followed a dry stream bed and was indeed not extremely accessible; I got to use some of my rock climbing experience again, but it was doable.
A little further on, I heard 4 people talking about a picture they were about to take: 'so you three stand there...' 'but what about you? You're not in the picture'. So I asked if they wanted a picture with all four, which made them quite happy.
That was just before Berdorf; just after, I walked into a forest again. And I heard loud music coming from somewhere, which was odd. Eventually I got to a cave where there was indeed some kind of party going on, though it was rather vague. But they had lights and music and, apparently, fun.
The map had promised me a path that ran beside a stream for a long time, and I had been looking forward to that; but this stream turned out to be dry, too. Dried up streams are weird. But the scenery was, again, beautiful, with big rocks and stuff. The forest that came after was beautiful, too. But I was by now getting tired again, and I felt reaching Echternach was taking a very long time. After a long descent I finally reached it, and after some inner debate (it's only 5, it's too early to stop, and 18 km is slightly pathetic; but I am really tired, the next campsite is another 9 km away, and my legs shake when I stand still) decided to camp there. So I left the trail to find the campsite, arriving before 6. Strangely early, but I was really tired.
After I had recovered a bit, later that evening I had a conversation with my neighbours, who were Dutch, about hiking and lightweight gear; they had hiked in Patagonia and would be going to Iceland next. And they agreed that hiking with two people is really different from hiking alone, because you only need one tent and one cooking set and can share the weight. It was nice to talk to them.

One really funny thing about Luxemburg is the languages. It's totally unpredictable if someone speaks French, German, or Dutch, I come across signs and notices in all three languages, and when talking to someone I ask whether they speak French, English, Dutch, or, if they don't respond to those three, German - my German is really bad. And then there's Letzebuergs, the Luxemburg language, which sounds like a dialect of Dutch with strange influences from German and French. When written down, I can make some sense of it (although I don't have a clue how they pronounce 'ë' in a word like 'bësch' (which seems to mean forest)), but when spoken, it's totally incomprehensible.

Geschreven door Jewaontheroad