DAY 232 - MERZIG (GERMANY) TO REMICH (LUXEMBOURG): 20.5 MILES (41,000 STEPS)

11 December, 2011

20.5 (Total: 2301.8 miles)–41,000 (Total: 4,950,601 steps)

I bid farewell to David in the morning, as he was to travel on to Luxembourg with my rucksack and I set off by train for Merzig, bringing to an end a six week epoch of the journey in which I had been blessed by the company and support of: Xuelin Black, Stephen Bates, Tom Hall, Rob Parsons, Peter Vardy and David Bates – who had all answered the call to offer support whilst my broken arm and shoulder were healing and during which time I was unable to carry my large rucksack. I was now on my own again and would need to carry the rucksack again to complete the required distances, despite the shoulder being far from recovered. I didn’t mention this at the time, as it is Christmas and people would rightly be busy preparing for the celebrations without someone having to do a mercy dash across the Channel with the time and expense that such a trip would involve. This left me quite reflective and melancholic. Added to which the mileage and the weather were beginning to take their toll. I had done 130 miles in a single week, which equalled the record distance I had set when I came up the Croatian coast from Zadar to Rijeka. I have had these times before and normally manage to get through them by keeping moving and as a result of my completely irrational sense of optimism, though even this was in short supply as the rain lashed down again.

In Mettlach I was quite inspired by a large piece of open air art, by Stefan Szczesny, called ‘The Living Planet Square’—I spent quite a while reading the descriptions of each of the ceramic panels (pic), but wasn’t quite sure I understood where the artist in this case was coming from – which is a poor reflection on me, not him. Nonetheless I enjoyed the bright colours and vast scale of the work and tried to pick out the continents.

Then it was up the hill out of Mettlach, which I made heavy weather of as much for my emotional as my physical shape and then an uplifting walk through the forests and into Orscholz. In the main square beside the church, a group of young people were setting up a tent to serve hot mulled wine and waffles. The boys gathered around the large pan of mulled wine, watching it bubble away, whilst the girls were busily organising the rest of the operation. They didn’t have much trade so I gave them their first order and it opened up a great conversation about the walk and the truce. I do get a pleasure out of telling people what I am doing, not in a self-adulatory sense, but just in seeing the response to the concept of the truce.  Invariable no-one has ever heard of the notion that a guy, who downs two large cups of mulled wine and three waffles at 11:30am on a Sunday morning, is capable of walking a few hundred yards across the town square, never mind another 10 miles to Remich—here they had a point, but that has taken years of practice to perfect.

Climbing higher onto a ridge which overlooked Remich in Luxembourg and from which the tall buildings of Luxembourg city could be viewed, I came across an unusual sign indicating a ‘Peace Memorial’. As I approached the small memorial, I found that it had been erected by veterans of the US Army, 94^th Infantry Division, who had been engaged in heavy fighting in this area around what was known as the Mosselle-Saar Triangle; one did not need to be a military historian to figure out that this ridge would have been prime real estate on the battlefield.    It carried this inscription: Nulla Salus Bello Paces Te Poscimus Omnes, which is from a poem by Virgil and roughly translated via Google as—All of you ask for peace, for there is no salvation in war. The peace memorial seemed a bit tired, overgrown and uncared for, compared to military monuments and memorials which commemorate great victories or great leaders. I don’t know why this should be so, but I think it tells us something about what we value.

Down into Remich and a very friendly welcome at the St Nicholas Hotel, another glass or two of mulled wine at the Christmas market and then a wonderful Chicken Tika at the  ‘Ghandi’ Indian Restaurant just off the water-front, things were beginning to look up again…..