Castle Fun for Young & Old

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Stuggled a bit getting up and so missed getting on the earliest cruise on the Rhine. I was planning on getting the earliest one, getting off at St Goar to check out the Rheinfels castle, then getting on a later one to continue onto Koblenz. So I jumped on a train to St Goar, which luckily for me was also packed with bloody Year 2 or 3 schoolkids. Grrrrr.

Off at St Goar, no lockers at the station but the nice ladies at the tourist info will let you stash your stuff there. Walked around the little town a bit then headed up the hill to the ruins on the Burg Rhienfels, back in its day the best castle on the Rhine and the one only one on the French side of the Rhine to hold the French out a few times.

The castle is mostly just ruins and a fraction of its original size after some of it was blown up to cannibalise the material for there things later. The pamphlet says to bring a torch for the passageways which is something you should note. I walked around up on top on the first suggested walk around in the castle, then started doing the second one, which goes through lower levels of the castle, including some passageways where it isnt very bright.

But if you look, there are plenty of other passageways the pamphlet doesnt talk about, and its when you go down there you need the torch. They are pitch black, and using the autofocus lamp on the camera just doesnt work. An older German couple had been wandering around in the tunnels using a candle, whcih they gave to me as they were leaving. So down the mine I went...

Could see very little even with the candle... first junction thought I follow the idea of always turning in the same direction, that way if you get lost, you just keep heading in the opposite direction to get out. After relighting the candle, went left but that didnt go anywhere, so took the next left (straight), then the next left when the candle went out again. By now my knees were really hurting because I was pretty much crouched down, one arm holding my small backpack and the other hand on the ground holding the candle trying to shuffle along. The tunnel wasnt 3 foot high and a little less wide.

I decided to bail on it as I had no idea how much further it went before it came out somewhere else in the castle. Did some more walking around down other tunnels, would appear 30m away behind a barricade with people on the other side looking at you and asking how the hell you in THERE lol. It was great fun, just take a torch and dont have a backpack with you.

After several hours crawling all around the castle went back down to the town for some lunch and got on the 4pm boat to continue down the Rhine. Of course my friend the rain had to make an apperance so the weather went bad, raining and windy. Didnt stop me from taking the view from the roof of the boat, though tshirt and shorts probably wasnt the best clothing for it. Wouldve been great doing it in nice weather, but oh well.

At Koblenz got the train to Cologne and ended up walking around in the rain for 30 minutes thanks to the crap directions from the hostel on how to get there. Plenty of German soccer fans around cheering and shit, I thought from the noise they mustve won the comp. But no, turns out they just played a round game. And lost. Talk about going overboard. And almost like England in any sport, celebrating losing another game lmao.

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