Day 13: Buchanau, near Zweisel

I awake in the hotel at the top of the Arber, and looking out of the windows, thick white clouds fill the valleys and you cannot see the villages below. As it clears, just beyond the nearest town of Eisenstein, the houses and hotels are in Czechoslovakia, barely the length of a football pitch from Germany. The scenery is spectacular, tall pine forests interrupted by houses and fields in the valleys.

It is already sunny and warm, and it is hard to believe that a few months ago, the Arber was covered in 5 metres of snow, burying many of the buildings. Since I was last here, this has become a serious ski resort, with gondolas and several 6-person, high-speed lifts. Only one is operating today to bring hikers up the mountain. The slopes are dotted with snow-making machines, like giant crickets reaching over the grass.

It’s a modest hotel, and there are 10 guests staying overnight. Over breakfast, I chat to a man from Hamburg who is taking a couple of weeks to hike through this range. He has a six-hour walk ahead of him with a back pack. Igo tells me later that he sometimes receives mail packages for his guests which contain clean clothes for them to change into, sent by their wives to various spots in the mountains, scheduled to arrive a few days apart.

In the afternoon, we return down the mountain to their other home in Buchanau, and after watching an excellent German side win 3-0, we take a long walk around the small village that looks more typically Swiss than German. It even has its own small castle. Then we head out to dinner at a nearby restaurant. Igo tells me amazing stories about his music career throughout Russia and Asia, before returning to Germany to establish the hotel.

We watch England do enough against Sweden to win the group but draw the match, and the English press will give them a caning. It looks like the end of Michael Owen’s illustrious international career, and Rooney still looks rusty.