Day 24 Bad Langensalza to Gotha - 28 km. Total km: 468

Today was a hard long day. Hard not only because it was a long day, but also because it was through rolling landscape which meant that we had long steady inclines only to go down again. There were several villages which we mostly skirted around. 

The route was a mix of road walking and on tracks through farmland. The day would have been longer only we made several shortcuts both at the start then nearing the end of day, walking into Gotha. 

The Rathaus in Bad Langensalza.

We're seeing more maize crops now, there were non in the north.

As well as massive areas of maize, we've seen areas of a crop which looked like broadbeans, and of sugar beet. 

Walking through one of the villages. 

These two ladies, in the photo below, were sitting here, quite a way from any village. When they saw us one of them called out, in German of course, and I had to go through the, 'I'm sorry, we don't speak German.' She then wanted to know if we were from Sweden or the Netherlands, and was shocked when I said we're from New Zealand. She then asked how old we were. I managed all of this in my German - meaning the conversation lasted a while. 

At one stage we had to walk on a very long overgrown track through massive wheat fields. It was slow going because the ground was very uneven with many booby traps which we couldn't see. Also, everything was very wet after overnight rain. 

Abbot Albert, when he travelled to Rome all those centuries ago, wouldn't have had to contend with this as these vast wheat fields are a legacy of the collective farming that were formed in the old East Germany era.

We have been told by several people that when Germany reunified these vast areas were bought by West Germans. Karin, our host in Schernberg, said that her son works on a 1,000 hectare cropping farm which is owned by a West German. She said that his boss was not good. I don't know what she meant by that. 

At times the wet grass was knee high.

Our only stop for the day was in the church grounds, where we found a seat to have lunch, in the village of Westhausen. 

Sankt Vitus Kirche, Westhausen.

All the graves were planted & well cared for, not concreted over.

We're seeing home vegetable gardens now, and even what looked like allotments. After walking the camino routes in Spain where every home had a beautifully kept garden, either big or small, we had been wondering why we hadn't seen any until now. Maybe further north has been too cold for them. Karin, our previous host, had a potted lemon tree which she had to put in a shed every night. She said it was far too cold leave it out.

This is part of a long line of what looked like allotments. 

Then it was on into Gotha.

We saw very little of Gotha but the little we did see had none of the charm of Bad Langensalza. 

In central Gotha. 

The Rathaus, Gotha.

We were late arriving in Gotha and our priority was to get to a supermarket as we needed supplies for our dinner tonight plus all our food for tomorrow as, being Sunday, most, or everything, will be shut.

We're staying at couple of kilometres out of central Gotha in the Church of Reconciliation community rooms. It's very basic.

Among our sightings today was a deer that can't have realised that we were so close as it suddenly started and lept away. It was so beautiful. We see deer regularly, but usually at a distance. We also saw different species of snails. Some were extremely tiny, white-shelled ones, there were also some larger ones which had orange with dark stripes shells, and then were large snails with light tan-coloured shells. Hares were plentiful again. We also saw several moles, but only dead ones. We've been seeing molehills all along. 

Gotha is the fifth-largest city in Thuringia, Germany, 20 km west of Erfurt and 25 km east of Eisenach with a population of 44,000. The city is the capital of the district of Gotha and was also a residence of the Ernestine Wettins from 1640 until the end of monarchy in Germany in 1918. The House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha originating here spawned many European rulers, including the royal houses of the United Kingdom, Belgium, Portugal and Bulgaria.

Population 46,300

Source: Wikipedia