Kédange-sur-Canner to Metz: Day 134

A long day at over 35 kilometres but I made good time on straight trails over only slightly hilly terrain.

The Hotel de la Canner was one of the few, possibly the only, hotel in the area, maybe as the region is not a tourist destination (apart from the city of Metz). Consequently most people at the hotel seemed to be business people or tradesmen of some kind who swiftly dispatched their breakfast (a typical continental buffet of bread, cheese, salami, ham, yoghurt, fruit, and miniature croissants). 

Aside from the odd dogleg the route today was mercifully straight, with none of the serpentine curves that lengthened the E2 in Belgium and Luxembourg. One could argue that this was because there were few sights to interest the walker in, and indeed much of the day was over undulating farmland and through deciduous woods. Nevertheless I was happy striding along straight tracks between open fields, ploughed brown or green with grass, admiring the scabious and knapweed flowering on the wayside, or else walking on a path in woodland, careful to avoid stumbling on protruding roots. One stretch of path was between high hedges of shrubs of various varieties. The orange red of the rose hips and the deeper crimson of the hawthorn berries warned me that summer was drawing to a close. On a road between a ragged lines of horse chestnut trees, the shiny brown chestnuts lying on the ground reminded me of games of conkers in my youth, when we discussed ways of hardening them in the oven or soaking them in vinegar (never worked for me). Earlier in Luxembourg I had seen walnuts on the path, dropped from trees, not something we found in Cardiff.

Rosehips, a sign of summer's end.

Countryside views.

My route visited a few villages today, such as Saint Hubert and Vigy, and bypassed others. There were two restaurants in Vigy offering pizza or plats du jour, but I did not want anything too heavy and settled for a cherry coke and Twix from the shop on a bench outside the church. There had been a traffic jam in the village of parents picking up their children from school at 12:00. Were they just taking them home for lunch I wondered or was there a half day for some reason?

Every village has a Marie or town hall with a mayor.

After a few false starts the GR5 could not keep me from the suburbs of Metz any longer and I entered an area of white apartment blocks surrounded by grass and parents walking young children. Residential areas followed and eventually the roads became busier. After a visit to a MacDonalds for a very late lunch, my final stretch was by the city walls of Metz and along the riverside. Turning into a network of narrow streets as cafes were arranging their chairs for the evening trade, I arrived at the apartment I had booked, hidden behind some shops. 

Tomorrow I have designated as a rest day and have already washed my clothes in the flat's washing machine, one of those rest day chores. I have chosen a restaurant in front of the cathedral for dinner, which no doubt adds a few Euros to the bill, but is also a pleasant place to watch people walking by as well as admiring the delicate masonry filigree of the cathedral's spires, flying buttresses and saint filled arches, highlighted by floodlights as the evening sky darkened.