RHEIN-BURGEN-WEG 1/2

This is a hike that I did by myself in multiple days. The first three days (half of it) I always did sections but slept at my moms. The upcoming second half, I will sleep in towns on the way. Some statistics:

• 2019-07-09: St. Goar – Bad Salzig, 19.1 km, 662m ↗︎, 648m ↘︎
• 2019-07-10: Bad Salzig – Stolzenfels, 25.1 km, 6:37h, 1768m↗︎, 1746m↘︎
• 2019-07-13: Rhens - Stolzenfels - Winningen, 22.7 km, 4:42h, 1232m↗︎, 1232m↘︎

Because I have to test my new Altra Timp tracking shoes I was looking for some hikes I can do around the area of my mom’s home where I’m currently staying for two weeks. I decided to challenge myself a little bit. I am planning to visit friends in Bonn and Mettmann (near Düsseldorf) and why not just walk to Bonn instead of taking the train?

Unfortunately I do not have enough days in a row to just do it as a long trail. This is one reason why the more and more famous Mittelrhein-Steig on the right side of the Rhine river did not really work out. Also it was a little long to make it in the time that I have available. Thus I decided to walk on the left side of the river. There is a trail that almost runs through my hometown, the RheinBurgenWeg (Rhine Castle Track).

I started this week with two day hikes that lead me from St. Goar to Stolzenfels Castle. After the hikes I went back home to my mom’s, so I only had to take a daypack with me.

Relatively simple hike along the hillside, sometimes relatively narrow passages next to a steep slope. Nice views over the river.

Mostly similar to day 1. Special was the Klettersteig (fixed rope route) after Boppard. Doing this without a harness was exciting and a little frightening at the same time. Don’t know if I would do it again like this. In some places you definitely should not slip from the metal anchors that you have to walk on. But definitely a nice section that I would recommend. At the end my mother picked my up and we had a short iced coffee stop in Boppard on the way back.

After two days break with pretty bad weather I continued the trail. I had to start from Rhens again, because there was no reasonable public transport going to Stolzenfels. The hourly bus from Boppard would leave 1 minute before my train arrives and that made walking a quicker option. But the way along the Rhine river was not very beautiful. After getting up the hill at Stolzenfels it went mainly through a forest and the weather was pretty grey for most of the day.

The trail basically lead over the hill from the Rhine side to the Mosel side, which ended up being much more beautiful in my opinion. I enjoyed the last bits through the vineyards, but had to rush a little bit to make my train back to Koblenz, where I was happy that my mom met me again to bring me back home.