Hiking: Sports, nature and tourism

If you hike a beautiful area with a lot of historic cultural sites along with beautiful outlooks on nature, it is hard to maintain the athletic aspects only. Sports physicians define hiking as walking through nature with different type of tracks and at a minimum speed of 5-6 km. It can range from an easy paved road to paved forest trails, rougher track area, different types of soil up to slippery extremely steep serpentines.In most cases the distance ranges between 10 and 30 km per day.

However, there will always be the touristic side of the hike. This means that we need to count sightseeing  ancient castles and other historic cultural sites, different photo stops which shouldn't be missed or just enjoying the scenery. These non-sports activities add  some extra time to the planned hike. We always have to go for compromises because if we want to enjoy nature and culture to the fullest,  the minimum cardiovascular workout cannot be maintained throughout the whole hike. A stretch of app 20 km can easily take around 6-7 hours including all breaks.

This is another part of the Rheinsteig between Braubach and Filsen, alongside the Rhine including steep ascends and descends, partly slippery, partly in forested areas and the other stretch in the hot sunny part along the Rhine

Touring the vineyards in a tractor-pulled trailer with free-flowing wine

My Australian friend Monica has organised a typical drinking tour to the Dörrschuck winery in Lörzweiler near Bingen. It has a beautiful location at the mouth of the Rhine Gorge. For EUR 15,- it gets you a beautiful tour, four types of free-flowing wines, non-alcoholic beverages and snacks.

It is not the type of wine tasting where you can taste many different types of wine before buying them.  Although Andreas Dörrschuck had excellent expertise, he didn't present much about wine-manufacturing unless you ask him explicit questions. Rather is it a mixture between a drinking orgy, a fun event with friends, family or colleagues and a tour through a beautiful vineyards with breathtaking views of the Rhine,

Andreas Dörrschuck, the owner of the winery, drove the tractor pulling a 14 seater trailer. The trailor was covered with a canvas roof in case of rain and too much sun. It was raining on that day, first it was covered but later Andreas opened it to allow us a better view.

As soon as we arrived, Andreas introduced some beautiful wines for us to taste. Then we embarked on the trailer. It was arranged in a way only a meticulous German business can do. In the middle of the trailer, there was a long plank with holes to put in the glasses and bottles. It also served as a table where you could put your plate with food. The wines and food was kept cold in a cooler box.

Food such as pretzels and homemade Spundekäs, a typical Mainz wine companion snack made of  cream cheese, chopped onions and paprika powder, was available in abundance. The main idea was to help ourselves to all the good food and fine. Water and grape juice was also provided but the majority of people preferred the wine

It was a great group with some great conversations and jokes. A good diversity of nationalities only added spice to the event. Two visitors came directly from Australia. After the tour, Andreas still had a little surprise for us. A lovely semi-dry red wine was waiting for us to be tasted. Andreas' expertise of winegrowing also made the tour unforgettable

Such a tour easily tempts you to drink excessively due to the self-service and the happy atmosphere. One of our friends, an experienced drinker and avid traveller collapsed all of a sudden. Thank God a few of our friends brought him home by bus and taxi, so nobody needed to worry about people not getting home