Shvil Israel Day 4: Intersection of Wadi Amud and Road 85 to Tiberias

Shvil Israel Day 4

Starting km: 87

Finishing km: 110

Distance walked: 23km

I'd started considering starting my daily walks an hour or two before sunrise, but with my late arrival the previous night, it was already light by the time I woke.

I crossed Road 85, labelled "Dangerous Crossing" on my GPS track.  Bloody right! It was a motorway! If it was in the middle of the day instead of 06:15 with very sparse traffic, I don't think I would have even considered it!

On the other side I found my way down a drainage spillway and a place where the trail was signed and the fence pushed down by other walkers and found my way back to the floor of Wadi Amud.  No more crazy cliff climbing, just a beautiful jaunt down an orange, brown and grey canyon with heaps of birds and yet more wild boar for company.

I was very disappointed when the canyon ended and I popped out into farmland (including heavily irrigated bananas!) and at 08:45 had a hot and sweaty walk into the town of Migdal.  So hot and sweaty that I was about ready to call it a day at 10:00 and check into the town's youth hostel. Problem being it wasn't there. I really needed to charge my phone at this point, and I really wanted to spend my first night in four indoors.  But the nearest hostel on the trail was still 17km away and was booked full for the night.

But a big cold drink from the store and some thinking and I realized I could make my destination the city of Tiberias instead of Poriya.  It was a little off-trail, but it was easy enough to get back on without backtracking, it was only 8km away. Tiberias was the seat of Raymond, one of the foremost figures in the Kingdom of Jerusalem during the third crusade.  And the walk looked like a possibly even pleasant one along the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Done.

As it turned out this seemingly great idea was merely so-so.  The shore was rarely visible, despite being only 20-100m away, and when it was it was often muddy and rubbish strewn.

But on the positive side, I found that the trails on my map were actually part of another marked walking path, so all I had to do was follow the blue, white and purple stripes into Tiberias.  And some of the shore was actually lovely, with nice shady areas occupied by Israeli families camping and picnicking, hanging in hammocks and enjoying the afternoon. Other sections at first bothered me, with their muddy patches formed by drainage from the wetlands behind fences and the swimming pools and water features (!) of big lakeside homes atop retaining walls, but this turned pleasant again when the mud became clear, stoney bottomed streams that cooled my feet which would, after all, dry in no time.

But once again to the negative, I got stung on the back and back of my neck when ducking under some sort of vine in an overgrown section of trail and, more seriously (as I would later realize) I was also stung on the ankle by an oriental hornet (in almost the exact same spot a wasp had got me the previous afternoon!)

I arrived in Tiberias hot and thirsty, but delighted to just sit in the air conditioned lobby of the hostel I'd booked for two hours until check-in.

Throughout the afternoon I came to realize that, though it hadn't hurt much more than the earlier wasp, I was having some sort of allergic reaction to the hornet sting.  I had hives on my hips and arms, my lips became fat, and my left ankle and foot swelled not painfully, but alarmingly.

By late afternoon I'd decided to take a rest day and give the swelling some time to go down.

The rest of my time in Tiberias consisted mostly of laying in bed with my foot elevated and doing what one is meant to do on Shabbat (I'd arrived on Friday afternoon): resting.