Friday 15 May 2015
| Distance (km) | 22 kms | |||
| Distance (time) | 6 hrs | |||
| Climb / Descent | 595m / 505m | |||
| Hard / Soft surface | 45% / 55% | |||
| Landscape |
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| Weather |
 22° 4 Bft
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Today we go back to Rombas by train again: we leave from the station in Thionville around 9:30 and so we are at 10 o'clock in Rombas again. We visit the same bakery as yesterday for some bread and after that we have to go to the optometrist for sunglasses for Lupita who lost them somewhere the day before. But then we are on the move...
It is actually quite a long walk to get out of Rombas and already directly after the last houses we arrive at Fond St.Martin. This is some kind of open sport centre with a climbing wall, a fairground, a pond and a bar, but I'm clueless what is so nice here that it needs such a large parking area. What we also don't understand is why the GR5 passes the pond, the fairgroud and the bar and just returns on the other side along the bar, the fairground and the pond. If we would have known we would have shortcut the whole loop directly after the climbing wall. Sometimes we suspect commercial interest (the bar) when it comes to the GR5 route. But ok, after this useless loop we walk into the forest. Since it rained alot last night we are zigzagging around the mud pools and this combined with a serious climb means we're sweating within 5 minutes as if it were a sunny summer day. And also in the forest it keeps looping so that after an hour walking we still have a view over Rombas. From here on it is a 10 kms walk through the forest. Sometimes muddy, sometimes well passable, but in any case nice and quiet. The first civilization we encounter is the village of Telnel which is not much more than some not-to-good-looking houses along a major road. But larger villages are within reach either to the left or right if needed. We cross the main road here and walk up a gravel path in the direction of the A4 motorway (Paris - Strasbourg) that we cross. It is amazing that for such an apparently unimportant gravel road a bridge over the motorway has been constructed. At the other side of the motorway we turn left and now we walk over a track parallel to the motorway with on our right hand side high above us a forest. After a couple of hours walking through the forest it's an enjoyable change to walk through the fields like this. Where the path curves to the right we have a good view over Metz in the far distance before we enter Feve. And surprised we are! After all those ugly mining towns this is finally a typical French village: beautiful old houses, a cosy main street, flowers. Exactly as one would expect France looks like. We walk through the main street and then cut in between two houses and going down, just to pass in between two houses again a bit further down: the village has a half moon shape that we just shortcutted. The lower part of the village is heavily being extended and through a real new residential area we leave the village again. Ahead of us we see several villages glued against the hills and it is a gamble which village we're heading for. Eventually it appears that the village completely to our right is Norroy-le-Veneur, our next destination. We walk on a tarmac cycle path gently climbing towards the village. Only the last couple of 100m go up more steeply. Walking like this in the open fields is rather warm, so in the village we have a short stop for something to drink before we continue. We now pass several gravel shortcuts between tarmac roads and pass the village of Plesnois. Once back on tarmac it climbs considerably and at the highest point we enter Saulny. We do have to walk a bit more in between the houses before we arrive at the main road. And we are lucky again: exactly where we hit the main road is where the bus stop is. As it is 16:30 now we have 1.5 hours to relax since the bus won't arrive until 18:05. And so we're at the point of going to the bar next to the bus stop when we decide to double check the bus schedule. To our surprise a city bus to Metz will pass in 5 minutes. So we might want to wait a bit here... Ok, it takes 10 minutes but then indeed a bus passes that brings us directly to the bus terminal behind the railway station in Metz from where we take the train to Thionville. And so we are at 18:00 in Thionville while we expected to have a bus in Saulny around this time... |
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