6th October 2017 Day 2 Heiligenkreuz to just outside Kaumberg, Austria. On foot. The second half of Stage 1.
The Via Sacra path.
I rose very early for the first service of the day at Heiligenkreuz Monastery where I slept the night. In the chilly church, the Fathers must have been happy to have their white habits with wide sleeves to cosy their hands in. Some had additional black skull-caps; one his pointy hood pulled over his head.
Intoning their Gregorian chants, the 30 men from all around the world enacted their daily rituals, taking it in turns to start off the constituent parts. Sitting then standing, turning towards the altar then backing into their own wooden slot like well practiced horses, turning the pages of the great books propped up in front of them, they alternated being upright and bowing in reverence.
There were 6 of us congregation dotted about the pews, which was very different from the 200 strong crowd of the previous evening when a group of business people were there for a visit.
Heiligenkreuz Monastery, Lower Austria.
Breakfast consisted of fresh white bread rolls, yoghurt, cheese, some fresh and some tinned fruit, jams, honey on tap, and a broad array of drinks etc which set me up for the day.
Outside of Mass, the brethren were delightful, laughing, ruddy-faced and balding, making jokes with everyone and giving what looked like entertaining tours in English when required.
Spot the red and white sign on the tree!
It was a windy day when I set out, and I gave thanks for the red and white horizontal striped way-markers because the Via Sacra yellow arrows were few and far between. Lost once more amongst the hills, the green chestnuts’ littered the paths with their shiny brown tokens. The walk was slow with fragrant white roses, gleaming red berries, the sun shining from behind the clouds and lighting up the almost luminous Autumn leaves. Although I felt urgency and some sort of competitive streak I wondered with whom and why for as I had no itinerary or deadlines to meet. In fact I had the luxury of no companion and no compunction to arrive at a particular place by a certain time, so I encouraged myself to stop and take notes, photos, write messages and bask in the sun.
Kestrels (or some such raptor) danced together on the thermals, six of them mimicking those which entranced me in the Basque country last year – piping and whistling they were.
There is a tremendous amount of forestry and logging all through this area.The church at Maria Reisenmarkt.
Maria Reisenmarkt is a very pretty village with a steep climb out via a stony road (medium and tiny white rocks with tree roots, leaves, sometimes concrete, mud or grass). The beechwood was wonderfully quiet with occasional rustling, and there was a corresponding quiet inside me.
With pines interspersed, the sunshine is away up in the tallest canopy rather than on the ground allowing a cold wind to transport its Fall scents. Every now and then a golden leaf wafts down, and sometimes the trees catch most of the wind and I only experience a breeze. Once out in the open there was a tiny village with a huge gasthaus to serve me lunch.
I was glad of the salad bar but could not eat all those chips.It had a kitsch garden.And in the car park was something I had not seen before: cars with their padlocked dog boots open for air.
After my welcome break, the path took me through Mayerling which I knew from Kenneth Macmillan’s ballet of that name. The full-length dance opens in Vienna and closes in the cemetery at Heiligenkreuz so its tragic trajectory mirrors my journey.
The Emperor Franz Joseph in the window at the Mayerling Convent’s museum.The village of Mayerling has a private convent.With the most beautiful little lake.Going out of Mayerling I came across this ‘come and cut your own’ flower farm with fields of gladioli and sunflowers.Most attractive and typical Austrian domestic architecture.A wayside shrine.
The last part of the day 2 walk was along a concrete cycle path which was hard on the feet so I did not make it right into Kaumberg. Instead I chanced my luck at Gasthof Renzenhof by the main road which is not one I would recommend at this time of year. The owner obviously did not expect anyone so the beds were as their previous inhabitants had left them and nothing was clean.
However the harvest was almost in, bottled or made into jam, and the breakfast was a delight. She even made me a boiled egg, bless her.
I used my sleeping bag for the first time having carried it around for nearly 2 weeks, and needed two of her duvets on top in the unheated room. Happily 5 euros was knocked off the price!It always seems fortuitous when I come across a donkey on my travels as I did today!
Via Sacra pdf leaflet to download but do not rely on this alone. Make sure you also use other maps and more detailed information to avoid getting lost.
Walking Donaustadtbrüke to Schönau an der Donau. 30 kms.
Carla, Karen and Nicolas.
I took the U2 metro line to Donaustadtbrüke which means the bridge over the river Donau (Danube), from the town side to the island.
I had the pleasure of some unexpected company in the form of 3 pals from the European Shiatsu Congress I had lately attended. They even carried my heavy rucksack for me in relays for the first hour and a half. That’s what friends are for! We sung Lets Go Fly a Kite from the film Mary Poppins and we fair swung along together.
It was great to be out of the city after a hectic and action packed week. It is a wide waterway with extensive tributaries making for divers intermediary land masses with little to distinguish them except that they are basically green and not built-up.
Having left nearly 2 hours later than planned, we crossed to the southern bank earlier than the map showed. There were toilets there and what looked like a good place to eat and drink.
The sun was still shining with a strong wind when I struck out alone, having hugged my goodbyes.
A walk along the Danube from Vienna
What with new boots (which broke slightly when I put them on that morning) and it being my first long walk with a back pack since June, it took me a while to get into my stride. When I did – with a big deep sigh – I rediscovered the joy!
I was on green paths beside flowing blue waves, amidst wild flowers of purple, pink, blue, white and yellow with butterflies to match. They seemed to appear by magic from the ground they were camouflaged by as I trod on it.
I had to negotiate the oil refinery which smelled very unpleasant, complete with loud machinery. Up until now I was on cycle paths with the bikes tinkling their bells or skimming past, but once clear of the industrial area, dragonflies played around me, walnut shells crackled underfoot (reminiscent of the Camino Francés), there were ducks, swans and swathes of happiness.
The path moves through a Natural Park and there are attractive wooden dwellings on stilt legs at regular intervals. Many of them have the same bucket fishing nets I saw along the coast of Brittany in France in May 2017.
It was beautifully quiet and I caught myself exhaling again. A heron took off from the pool’s surface, dragging its webbed feet out of the water with sheer determination on the way to a better spot.
Having changed to sandals to give my new blister some air, I enjoyed the soft white sand between my toes.
There were 2 men on the opposite bank when I stopped for my picnic. Other than that I saw no walkers until I changed back into my boots several hours later. I was sitting by a pool on the bleached stones when a couple of experienced looking hikers came by and were able to point me in the right direction for what turned out to be the final half hour.
I thought I was three quarters of the way there and would have to just stop in order to avoid being on the path when it got dark, and so I stopped at the pleasant looking cafe to ask the way to the nearest town. Someone overheard me and said I could get a bus. I had 5 euros on me so had to forgo a cup of desperately needed tea when I spotted the sign Schönau an der Donau. Wow I had made it to the end of the walk without a donkey, without even knowing it! I was elated and full of sun.
In fact I needed 2 buses which collectively came to more money than I had, but the second driver waved me on anyway. What a great sense of achievement I felt!
Late afternoon in Schönau an der Donau.
Schönau has pretty, pastel-coloured bungalows, a church and fire station amidst flat and fertile farm land full of serious farm machinery as it is harvest time. The post bus was full of giggly school girls and posturing boys tossing back their fringes and feigning disinterest.
It is a flat, easy walk. The map looks like an ancient one, but the walk is simpler to follow than you might expect. There are hardly any arrows or signs (just one or 2 red and white horizontally striped ones after you cross the river), but as long as you stay close to, and on the right side of the Donau (Danube) you can take the footpaths with confidence. Skirting around the oil refinery is the least enjoyable stage, however what follows is glorious.
Woods near the Danube
Beware of Google maps! It does not cater for hikers, taking us on main roads and over busy junctions. It is great for getting your bearings, for orientating yourself when lost, but not for footpaths and tracks.
Both the map and Google need Internet. I have not yet found a suitable offline map but am working on it and will share when I find it.
A second blog about Vienna – photos, food, safety for women, tourist services and more.
I was visiting this elegant, dolls-house city for the first time for the purposes of attending the largest European Shiatsu Congress ever held. There were over 600 participants from very many countries including Greece, Norway, the Netherlands, Italy, Scotland, England, Germany, Switzerland and of course Austria.
It was truly wonderful to meet up with friends I made in France and Spain during the last year; spend time with colleagues from previous meet-ups; and forge new acquaintances.
In the same way that Gill, fellow practitioner, helped me find friends and hosts in Spain, Sabine was my guide and support here. I am grateful to her, her mother and Ursula for their kindness, generosity and friendship.
The Votifkirche.Palmenhaus (palm or glass house) for overwintering plants years ago, now a cafe.
Trying to find the Tourist Information I was drawn to a certain loudness which turned out to be a slightly pop version of Gloria In Excelsis Deo. On October 31 1517 Martin Luther nailed 95 theses on the gates to the Wittenberg Castle Church. Thus began the Reformation whose 500th anniversary was this year. I had stumbled across the preparations for this event.
Useful facts: The ITI Tourist Information in Schmerlingpl. 3 is not the one you want, despite what Google maps tells you. Find the website for the right place and follow the link from there. And note that they cannot tell you anything about anywhere outside Vienna, including treks which leave the city or well-known pilgrimages.
All very grand and gold but the sun cannot usually get down to street level.
There are a lot of men in statue form standing high on rooves looking down at us mortals.
Maria Teresa had 16 children.
She was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Transylvania, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, the Austrian Netherlands and Parma.
Mozart cuts a fine figure.Whereas I thought Goethe just looked fed up and resigned.I liked the patterned roof of St Stephen’s Cathedral.And the interior was impressive.But the roccoco church of St Peter was altogether in a different league.Exterior of St Peter’s Catholic church.
I walked all over the city day and night and believe it is safe for solo women. I even made one very early walk alongside the metro line U6 which is raised up above the road level, and there were many men who looked ‘down at heel’, but no-one bothered me at all.
Controversial tourist carriages. There are rules in place to protect the horses from the heat and boredom but not everyone is convinced.
The Viennese speak great English which made it tricky to try my schoolgirl German. There are 1000s of tourists so most people you stop to ask the way have no better idea than you!
I was taken to the Nachtsmarkt (market) where I sampled olives and dried fruit, chocolate, and was given free soap. The vegetarian restaurant was amazing. Details below.
An evening wander in pictures (with a few words). Tuesday 26th September 2017
It was a stroll really, around the Theresiengasse area of Vienna this balmy evening.
Amongst pastel shaded, elegant streets looking mellow in the last rays of the day’s sunshine.
Craning my neck to enjoy the skyline.
With a quiet mind. I realised it had something to do with the fact that the voices around me, the advertising posters and signs, were all in a language I can barely understand (although some German vocabulary is slowly coming back from O’ level days).
Mother and daughter on their phones, each walking a small dog, stop to untangle the leads.
I followed my nose, my only aim being to find flowers for my kind host Ursula, and tissues to stem my Autumn cold. I am reminded that these were my father’s last days 19 years ago.
Kids playing in floodlit playparks on street corners, people smoking inside bars, zebra crossings everywhere.
Night fell and I relied on my GPS to find my way back, still comfortable in sandals and shirt.
23rd May 2017. Via de la Plata camino walk, Spain. Day 8: Villafranca de los Barros to Torremejía, in the autonomous community of Extremadura, Badajoz province. 26 kms which should take a minimum of 6 hours with breaks.
One star shone beside the moon (or was it a satellite?)
I left Villfranca at 5.50am and it was darker than ever before. Once I had found my way out of town I was in open scrub land. There was the dawn at the edge of the world; the sky was blue, red and orange. I heard the sound of a lone cockerel, a white horse was just visible, and I smelled the faint odour of farm fertiliser.
There were orange lights already in the distance, and tractors passed me under the tiny, thin crescent moon. The dawn chorus was sounding: Oh, the sweet, sweet feathered melodies!
As I found my stride, my state of mind calmed. My pack was extra heavy with provisions, and my feet already hot, but the air was cool and I gave thanks for that. The dusty path was occasionally lit up by one or two red tail lights of farm vehicles. Then it went quiet. The flower buds were tightly shut.
The sky was a bright orange purple and the fiery dome took three minutes or so to appear
The moment when the the sun finally rose was very exciting, and afterwards the opposite sky was a blank in comparison.
‘(Pilgrimage is) … walking in search of something intangible..’ p. 45Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit.
Some travellers write their blogs after getting back home, after the whole trip has ended, and I can see why; although the trekking itself does not take all day every day, so that you would think there was time enough in the evenings to write, I find that the attention needed to deal with practicalities, together with the attendant tasks of looking after the BodyMind, can take up a surprising amount of time and energy. On this journey I started posting my blogs daily, but gave up part way through.
I recently advised a prospective peregrino to leave books at home. That was partly due to the weight, but also because I do not read much when I am on a pilgrimage, and I do not see others reading around me. Fiction can transport you to another place, and many pilgrims believe that focussing on their spiritual goal is vital and do not want to be distracted.
‘…- and for pilgrims, walking is work.’ p. 45 Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit.
As I walked, I was reflecting: I could see that I have a tendency to set myself extra and unnecessary tasks. Yesterday I did some work for the business back home (perhaps thinking I was indispensible) and it transpired that it was a needless task. As I put one foot in front of another I could take note of such patterns and habits of mine.
Camino Publico de Chaparral , longitude 3,600 km, Ayuntamiento de Villafranca de los Barros
To the east were hills like different sized piles of manure you will clear up later, whereas the other half of the globe was flat to the horizon, and the vineyards of the Ribeiro region a uniform blue. The arrows were easy to see, the backpack was no bother, but my feet were still calling my attention at times.
Not long after, the sun lit them up and I enjoyed the immaculately ploughed red soil between rows of vines.
The world was in technicolour
Olives, with their stumpy wiggly trunks, stretched into infinity. One patch had solar panels and an extra crop of what might have been green alfalfa between the trees. The cordoned vines had thin little stems, perhaps because the wires were supporting them so they did not need to be stronger. I would like to know why some rows were planted north-south, and some east-west.
The sweet fennel and cow parsley smelled delicious. My skin remained cool, and it was brightening quickly. Other wild flowers competed with the blue of the sky, and there were His Master’s Voice horns of pink, common bindweed by the path.
Bright blue wild flowers competeing with the azure sky
Before I left the hostel, breakfast looked better than usual so I had paid for it, and consequently I was full of sugary energy. On the ground, my shadow was really tall; I thought it must be my alter ego which could reach things down from high shelves in the supermarket!
In the fields, today’s job was trimming the long tendrils, and other than those men working (an occasional conversation reached me), it was me, myself, I as far as the eye could see.
Vast expanses of sky and road
I liked the swirls in the earth at the ends of rows where the tractor had turned; hated the repetitive machinery noise to my left which source I could not see; and blocked my nose from the acrid, chemical smell I had been warned about.
I had also read that there was neither village nor water for the entire 26 kilometers, and I could believe it. I only had one litre of water and so knew that I would have to be careful not to drink too much too soon. Sadly, as I took the signposted turning, the noise got louder.
The tireder I got, the less time had passed since I last looked at my watch! Chemicals smelling like paint were being sprayed, so I tried to pick up pace, but my body had set its own rhythm. Tonight, I thought, I am drinking some wine!
By 8.40am I was no longer alone; there were four Italians in a group and another solitary man on the road. We moved at regular intervals from each other.
The same person I had shared a dormitory with the previous night, with his hat, carrier bag and wooden walking stick
After almost three hours without a break, I was casting ahead for a tree throwing shade, but there was not one until 9.20. After a fifteen minute break, and having eaten my orange because full much needed fluids and was the heaviest (delicious it was), I deduced that we were barmy, the lot of us, walking so far in this heat!
I then passed the hat-wearing man sitting on a wee waymarker, and he said he was muy cansado (very tired). He added that we were half way. On I went.
A town with unusual looking farm buildings appeared. Ah! maybe wine vats. It looked like the outside edges of a huge swimming pool and I imagined it was full of grapes with barefooted people trampling around inside it. Do they actually do that these days? I then realised that could of course be sewage, which would be considerably less ‘romantic’.
Luckily, the actual smell was of newly cut branches and very fresh sap.
For some reason I suffered a lot of pains on and off, and I also started to feel the skin on my right arm and leg, the side where the sun was, getting that soon-to-be-burned feeling. To remedy it, I draped my magenta wrap over that side of me – that scarf sure does come in handy. (See my blog on what to pack in your rucksack).
You cannot see from the photo, but the mountain rock strata were clear to the human eye
Swifts zapped flies, zig-zagging across my view. Were those cordoned olives? If they were, then that would make for many more plants per acre than the row system, so it would certainly make financial sense, if the earth could sustain it.
I broke again at 10.45 for lunch under a tree, feet throbbing – it was so very hot. A pylon was crackling like a fire, indeed there was a smell of burning. As I ate I let my crumbs drop for the ants and watched one carry a huge piece away, picturing it arriving back home, saying ‘look what I got!’ When I got up, I noted that it was a messy business for the bottom, sitting on the earth like that. I restarted at 11am and, yes, there were a lot of little inexplicable, smouldering fires alight between the olive trees.
A sea of bleached wheat
Towards the end of the day’s walk I spent a short period, only the second time in the past eight days, talking to someone as we went along. He was from Barcelona and was doing the camino to get away from his demanding family, he said. He assured me that despite the exhaustion, of course he wanted to keep on walking until he reached Salamanca (a further eleven days). Such determination!
At 1pm in a 31 degree heat, and after seven rather than six hours of walking, I arrived in Torremejía. (Put the accent on the final ee: toh-ray-mah-heee-ah).
Privacy – all the other beds were empty
The hostel host owns a bar as well, on Avenida Extremadura, but there was a family issue and it was closed that evening, so I sat in the one opposite and had a beer and wrote my notes.
Useful info: the supermarket on the same street is shut for a long time between lunch and evening.
I did buy that bottle of wine I had promised myself, and I also invited the man in the above photo, plus a Dutch cyclist new on the scene, to join me. We had some surprisingly entertaining conversation, in divers languages, and it was very enjoyable to sit around the table with fellow travellers again, as I had done so often on the Camino Frances.
For some reason the host kindly offered us a free breakfast when his bar reopened the next morning; it provided simple fare with generous portions and friendly service.
Toast for breakfast, with a great deal of butter
Tomorrow would be my last day on this leg of the 1000 kilometer Via de la Plata, so I would have to wait to see Salamanca another time.
For a list of stages of this camino and other information, check out this link:
Walking without a donkey 
