Day 63: Crazy weather

It did not rain yesterday, but really early in the morning, it was crazy windy and finally the thunderstorm came with much less rain than I had expected. 

I started when the rain stopped into a wet but nice morning, always walking along the border mainly through a beech forest. There are some really nice old trees on the way! However, I was tired, rather slow and unmotivated, taking lots of breaks. For example at the open church, where there were 2 wells with buckets to fetch water!

I had one really steep ascent (the trail really follows the border, which often is a straight line up or down a hill), but thanks to all the fire salamander on the way, I had lots of excuses to stop :) I saw 10 in total today, with only one on the evening!

Just after noon, I heard thunder again and there were a few raindrops. It didn't look too bad and after my experience of the day before, I kept on walking. There were trees everywhere to hide, so when the rain started, I stopped under some trees. However, it did not only rain a bit... it poored down. I got my rain fly out and tried to protect me and my backpack (which still had my solar module on top) from the rain. It was certainly better than nothing, but not good enough. I got quite wet. It was raining like crazy, windy and there was some hail in between. At least it wasn't too cold! Later today when I had cell reception, I read an SMS again, that was warning from bad weather....

When I continued on my way, I discovered that less than 100 m from where I hid, there was a roofed picknick area :/ Since it didn't look like the weather would improve, I sat down, got my dry pullover out and ate some chocolate. The weather stayed dry but foggy and dark - very strange! So I finally decided to walk at least another few kilometers, fetch some water from a stream further down the hill and then set up my tent.

Since tomorrow is supposed to be like today, I didn't get much hiking done, ate too much food and was already very short on my food calculation, I guess I have to do a detour to a store at some point. So sad, since I chose my route, avoiding towns and stores ;)

I saw 10 fire salamander today!!!!

One of the few views I got today

A huge blue slug!

What a giant!

Well with buckets to fetch water - some sun in the morning!

This is how the afternoon looked like - at least it is still kind of warmish;)