My two-week holiday is nearing its end and despite some pretty bad-weather forecasts Stef and I had a wonderful time hiking along the Sieg, the river that runs right behind our house.

Last year we decided to follow its course from the source to where it joins the Rhine, but some health issues (my knees were protesting wildly) and the weather (it was scorching hot) intervened and we only managed two days of hiking. This year we picked the trail up where we left it and pulled through until on Thursday we stood at the river mouth - tired but happy. The weather was mostly great, not too hot but with some sunny periods. Only one day was so rainy that we cut the route short.

Even the train driver strike didn't slow us down, despite doing the comfortable (and cheap) thing of taking the train to the trail head and back home each day. Luckily we are very close to the train station and the rails follow the Sieg all along its valley, making getting to the trail from the stations relatively quick and easy.

Here's a map of our trails. The source of the Sieg is on the right and the first two routes (green) are from last year).


For those who want to take a closer look, I've created our routes as paths in Google Earth and exported them. You can unzip this file and open it in Google Earth: Stef's and Ralf's Hiking Trails.

Overall we hiked about 146km (107km of those this year) and really enjoyed getting to know the Sieg valley better and navigating with a 1:25,000 topographical map. Did I mention that I love maps?