Le Randonneur: Custines

14 June 2015: The route of today's hike was determined, in part, by the difficulty of finding accommodations along this section of the GR5. Using various internet sources (e.g., booking.com, airbnb.com, etc.), we could find no hotel or chambres d'hôtes for more than 30 km along the trail from Pont-à-Mousson. However, there was an alternative: The GR5F, a trail that connects Metz and Nancy, passes through Pont-à-Mousson and follows a more direct line south, while the GR5 meanders farther west from Pont-à-Mousson before turning east and eventually intersecting again with the GR5F. By walking along that section of the GR5F, we could reach Custines, where there's a hotel, with a 28 km hike.

So that was the plan – and along the way, we modified the plan. After a pleasant walk through the forest west of Pont-à-Mousson, we arrived at Dieulouard around noon. The sole restaurant in this small town looked appealing, so we decided to have lunch there. (The food we were carrying for a picnic was pretty limited.) Unfortunately, there were two large family groups dining at the restaurant to celebrate first communions. Service was therefore slow; we waited more than an hour for our meal (which was delicious). The long wait gave us an opportunity to note the curious fact that the town's name contains all of the alphabet's vowels – and the time to study the map....

We decided that we should try to shorten the afternoon's hike by hitch-hiking part of the way. So we hiked from Dieulouard to Saizerais, where we quickly got a lift from a pleasant young man en route to his job as a maintenance technician in the Arcelor steel plant in Thionville. He kindly deviated from his route in order to drop us off near Custines. We thereby trimmed about 8 km from the planned route. Our feet and shoulders appreciated that!

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