Germany – Page 2 – Martin & Joy's Blog

2020-09-12, Saturday. Naturfreundehaus, Herrenberg, mountain biking & Waldseilgarten

As a treat for the girls, we all went down to the Naturfreundehaus, above the Autobahn tunnel near Herrenberg. We used to come here occasionally when we lived in Rohrau, but that might have been the last time I was here (1987?). Happily, it hasn’t changed much and is still very, very popular. We only just managed to park the motorhome in the very large car park.

The Waldseilgarten, just a 1km walk from the Naturefreundehaus, is a version of the Go Ape sites one finds across the UK: effectively up in the treetops, along rope walks & other obstacles; zip wires and much, much more. Not for me – I get vertigo just a couple of metres above ground, never mind the 5-25 metre height of some of the rope walks. I brought my bike with me as I’d been told there were some MTB trails at the same location.

As the place was so busy, there was a 1 hour wait for harnesses to fit the girls, so I went off to try out the trails whilst the others waited…

There are two trails: blue “Flowline” trail and red “Enduro” trail. I decided to start on the blue trail. It was actually very steep in places, with a few kickers, & tight switchbacks. Much steeper than an equivalent blue trail at home. It was also exceedingly short! It drops about 70 metres and then there’s a steep, but easily do-able road climb back up. I did the blue trail one more time, then I thought I’d take a look at the red trail. This has a couple of sizeable drops that would easily be graded as a double-dot black run back home! It also, rather dangerously, criss-crosses the blue trail in several places. Apart from the two big drops, there are some tight, steep switchbacks with roots thrown in for good measure. Technical, yes – but also very short. (Strava link here.)

In the meantime, all the others – Joy, Mark & the girls – got themselves kitted-up with harnesses for the rope walks, and the initiation training session.

It was one of the things Joy pushed herself to do, and – once up on the first proper ropes – regretted doing so! Whilst Emily & Clara were in their element, Joy was struggling with having the confidence to allow the harness to take the strain. She did manage to complete the first two sections before retiring with tired arms, though she was beginning to get the hang of it towards the end. A really good effort, I’d say.

Theirs was the last group to be allowed on: after the 1 hour wait, it was not far from closing time. Mark & the girls carried on to another section and then went to do “Flying Foxes” – 8 entire sections on zip wires!

In the meantime, I headed back to get a table at the Naturefreundehaus and order some pommes & drinks for Joy, Kathryn & myself as dusk approached. Mark & the girls joined us with barely enough time to grab their food before heading back to Ehningen for the fireworks.

Fireworks?

Apparently, there’s a major firework manufacturer based at the Steinbruch in Ehningen – just a few hundred metres away from Kathryn’s house, atop the so-called “Mount Ehningen” – actually the rubble from the quarry, which is now an enormous flat-topped hill, some 70 metres tall and a couple of hundred metres long. This guy often does test flights of fireworks from the top of the hill, but this time, he got approval from the local Gemeinde to do a full-blown display of some of his newer inventions.

The event had been advertised in the local papers, but I was completely unprepared for the scale: There were cars parked several kms away on the road back from Hildrizhausen: the Feldwege were full of cars all the way down to Ehningen. Ehningen itself was absolutely rammed with parked cars.

The display started as we we descending from Hildrizhausen as we’d got caught behind a tractor. It was still going when we got to Kathryn’s house some 10 minutes later. It was really spectacular – just a pity I didn’t catch any of it with my camera – though that seldom does justice to the display.

2020-09-09, Wednesday. Bike ride with the girls to Dagersheim

Eventually managed to persuade Clara to join us in a short ride on their mountain bikes to the Waldspielplatz in Dagersheim. Kathryn & Mark are both working (from home), so appreciate us keeping the girls busy until they go back to school next week.

Only a couple of Clara-induced crashes, but it might teach her to be a little more attentive!

2020-09-07, Monday. Forbach to Ehningen via Freudenstadt

Up the winding Murgtal (heading S) towards Freudenstadt: as it’s pretty much on our route to Ehningen, it seems worth a brief stop to have look at the Stellplatz (am Panorama-Bad – actually the car park of the swimming pool) and a quick mooch around the town.

Joy wanted to get to Ehningen so we didn’t stay long before heading off again, arriving at around 15:30.

2020-09-06, Sunday. Hornbach to Forbach, Schwarzwald

Time to head a bit further S & E along the route towards Ehningen. Ms SatNav routed us through France, through the Vosges du Nord, Alsace and over the Rhein into Germany. A couple of stops up the very busy A5, dodging the roadworks, climb up into the Schwarzwald, then down the Murgtal to Forbach-Gausbach, and Wohnmobilstellplatz Am Rappenfelsen Im Murgtal Forbach. It’s only a small Stellplatz; we fortunately managed to get the last of 7 places.

The Stellplatz is positioned, intriguingly, on what must once have been the old main road through the village, clinging precariously to the cliff faces as it wound round. The railway, single-track here, also winds in & out of tunnels. Immediately below where we are parked, the S-Bahn line emerges from a tunnel, only to disappear into another tunnel 65 metres along the line. Amazingly, the trains run really quietly, so hardly cause any disturbance, and they stop running after about 9pm.

Around the next bend on the old road are some fairly vertical cliff faces, popular with climbers. There were plenty of them when we arrived, though they’d all dispersed by 6pm ish. to get home at the end of the weekend.

Forbach is home to the largest wooden-span roofed bridge in Germany – definitely worth a look. Amazingly, it’s also a road bridge. There’s been a roofed bridge here for a very long time, but this one was substantially rebuilt in 1955. A pretty impressive piece of architecture.

As there was a nice looking Gasthaus right by the bridge, it would have have been rude to ignore the opportunity for a cofffee/beer respectively. The hotel seems to be run by oriental ladies, very polite, very attentive, and very masked. We were the only people there. Such a shame these places have lost so much trade during this pandemic.

On the walk back to Gausbach, I could sware I heard the whistle of a steam locomotive. Sure enough, as we reached the station, there was a steam train just pulling out: pity we just missed getting a better view of it.

2020-09-05, Saturday. Still in Hornbach

We’ve decided to stay here another day. Well, why wouldn’t you?

Today, we decided to ride the Hornbachtäler trail – somewhat shorter than yesterday’s ride, and it’s a lot cooler than yesterday – probably only around 22°C. A couple of stiff climbs, but nothing like as much climbing as yesterday. Also, a lot of the descents were on hard-baked lumpy grass round the sides of fields, which weren’t a great deal of fun.

After a brief stop to feed apples to the horses in the field, then finding the “füttern verboten” sign (oops), the trail dropped down into Mauschbach, a couple of km to the E of Hornbach, where we were supposed to cross to the S side of the Hornbach river to complete a loop there. The closure of the bridge “wegen bauarbeiten” (i.e. a very large crane) over the river put paid to that.

Plan B: join the Buffalo trail back into Hornbach, running alongside the road. We soon found why it was called the Buffalo trail; there was a herd of some 20 or 30 buffalo in a field. Quite a few tiny buffalo there, too (I guess they’re called calves??). Can’t say I’ve ever seen a field of buffalo before, outside of the US.

2020-09-04, Friday. Hornbach & France (again)

Time to get the bikes out of the garage. Last year, we attempted to follow the waymarked Pirminiusweg trail that goes from Hornbach, into France and down to the auberge Moulin d’Eschviller where we hoped to get food & drink. The trail then does a largish loop over fields and via a couple couple of small towns before turning back North to Hornbach. It’s about 90% off-road. Nothing technical, but a few steep climbs.

Following the trail within Germany was pretty straightforward, but it was very poorly marked in France so we lost our way a number of times. Plus… the Moulin d’Eschviller wasn’t doing food when we got there and we’d brought none with us.

Running out of energy we figured we’d take a short cut, which actually turned out not to be short at all. Needless to say, we did get back ok, albeit tires & hungry.

So this year, we thought we’d repeat the trail to the auberge, but then double back using a marked short cut. We’d also leave earlier to get to the auberge at lunchtime. It was a very hot day ~ 29°.

All went well until missed the turn off the trail to the auberge and had to back track several kms. The auberge was shut for 5 days vacation. An ancient peanut butter protein bar that was in my Camelback had to suffice.

Needless to say, we got back ok. Maybe we’ll even try again another time.

In various places around the trail, there were loads of apple trees, damson (Zwetschgen) trees, walnut trees, so we filled our boots. Some really ripe damsons. Apples not quite ready yet, but very good nonetheless.

The Stellplatz is completely full this evening. It’s weekend, and it seems like many Germans are staycationing.

Dinner in the moho, followed by a scocially-distanced couple of beers sitting outside the Capito restaurant/Gasthaus. Nice.

2020-09-03, Thursday. Longwy to Hornbach

Cool, damp & miserable this morning as we gladly leave Longwy & head towards Hornbach, in Saarland-Pfalz, near Saarbrücken, to a stellplatz we’ve stayed at before and we know it’s a lovely spot. We drove through Luxembourg, so were able to avail ourselves of a tankful of diesel at a mere €0.946/ litre.

Arrived in Hornbach at 15:00, and cycled round to the supermarket for important things like beer.

The Stellplatz is pretty full. Paid for 2 nights.

There’s a british couple here in a huge Carthago A Class with a Jersey licence plate: he’s a Geordie and hard to understand, but he pinned us down for a good 10 minutes before we could escape his clutches. Wanted to tell us all about his life roaming around Europe, especially Spain & Portugal, where they seem to spend 6 months of each year.

Later, he pinned down two separate pairs of Germans on the Stellplatz and gave them each a good grilling. Goodness knows how they managed to understand him.

Breisach – Kaiserstuhl

Thur 21^st Aug:

Well, we DID make it into France, but then beat a hasty retreat back into Germany!

Actually, it turned out to be such a warm morning, that we decided to stay another day and do some cycling around this very flat part of the Kaiserstuhl. That and it was pretty late by the time we managed to get ourselves some breakfast (that’s after I’d cycled into Ihringen and back to get some Pretzeln and Brötchen (bread rolls).

With Breisach am Rhein as our destination, we followed the “official” cycle routes taking us mostly over field tracks.

This area is full of agriculture and viticulture; any slightly South-facing slope is covered in vineyards, and there are many slopes here. Ok, I said it was flat, but Ihringen is the place where the lava flows from the dormant-for-the-last-n-million-years volcanos stopped. So the land jacks up steeply just to the North of Ihringen. Any ground that’s flat is covered in orchards or maize. There are plums, apples, pears, mirabelles, and more plums. Much of this is ripening right now; the air is heady with the scent of ripe fruit and the farmers are all out harvesting. Fancy a pear? Helping yourself to one is fine as long as you don’t take the mickey and start harvesting them all! Forget the industrial scale of farms we have in the UK: most of these farmers have anything from a field of fruit trees to a row or two of redcurrant bushes, and most of them sell direct to the public. Who needs food miles?

Let me say it here; Breisach is another beautiful town. Perched on the Rhine overlooking France, it has a Münster sitting atop its highest point, surrounded by the old town walls and enclosing steep cobbled streets. An ancient portal through the walls still exists through which cars can now pass (just!). When we were there, they were holding their Jahresmarkt (annual market – though I strongly suspect it’s held several times a year). It was pretty rubbish, really. Apart from the cheese stall.

Entertainment was provided by a seller of some new miracle car polish he was continually demonstrating with an old VW Golf for the benefit of the gathered throngs (i.e. no-one in particular). I didn’t take a close look at the product, but I sincerely hope it came with very large “Extremely dangerous and highly inflammable” warning notices plastered all over it. I say this because the seller demonstrated the flammability of it. I don’t know how it happened, but his bottle of stuff – which had a long spout – was in flames on the ground. The bottle itself was burning as well as the vapours, which were increasing in pressure inside the burning bottle as a result of the heat. He then tried to set his trousers on fire by standing on the bottle. The result of this was to eject more of the flammable liquid from the spout all over the pavement and thus spread the flames further. He then had the bright idea of pouring water on the whole. So now, the flaming fuel was spread even further on top of a river of water. Very smart. We beat a hasty retreat to a safe distance, anticipating the bottle would soon rupture or explode. In the meantime, he then decided to throw a rag on the flames. This would have been a good move had the rag not also been flammable, but then he threw more water over the rag which did eventually starve the flames and thus was Breisach saved.

Most of the market was just tat, so we wandered off to find a Bäckerei to get a sandwich. In this, we were wholly unsuccessful. We did, however, end up with a large slice of Käsekuchen (cheesecake) plus a buttered Pretzel each, so we wandered over to the Rhine to eat. And watch the swans. There were hundreds of them, mostly on the French side of the river.

Just for a lark, we decided to cycle over the Rhine and into France. In doing so, we discovered three petrol stations on the German side, practically shoulder-to-shoulder. This arrangement usually occurs when fuel on one side of the border is much cheaper than the other side. But everything I’d read suggested that diesel is cheaper in France than in Germany. So we decided to go further into France to find a French petrol station. We were wholly unsuccessful in this endeavour, too. Not a single petrol to be found within a 15 minute riding distance of the border. In fact, PETROL is more expensive in France, but DIESEL is cheaper (allegedly).

The Rhine here is not actually just the Rhine. That would be far too simple. There are no fewer than 3 bridges over the Rhines, these being:

Yer actual Rhine
The Rhine canal – which goes to and fro, joining up with the Rhine whenever it takes its fancy
Something very wide & turbulent – probably being fed from the bit of Rhine canal – that seems to be driving a number of underwater, power-generating turbines. I guessed this from the facts that there were a lot of electricity power distribution transformers alongside the “weir”, and that there were EDF logos all over the installation.

Yer actual Rhine. With substantial weir.

The first bridge is obviously German. It has a generous cycle path in addition to a footpath. The second & 3^rd bridges are equally obviously French. They just have narrow footpaths and cunningly hidden signs displaying graphics that supposedly suggest cyclists dismount and walk the footpath. This we only discovered when one officious lady pointed out the sign to us as we came off on the French side. Clearly we survived to see another day, but the ride was “entertaining”.

So tomorrow, we’ll head over into France (déjà vue…).

The Schwarzwald (Black Forest) and Kaiserstuhl

Sun 17th – Wed 20th Aug.

Sun:

We’d stayed with Kathryn & family for the last few days – getting back there in good time for Clara’s 2nd birthday.

We planned to move on today, possibly staying for a few days in the Schwarzwald. Kathryn suggested we all visit the Vogtsbauernhof museum in Hausach, as that would be on our way.

The museum is a collection of traditional Black Forest farmer’s houses (Bauernhöfer) – the earliest of which dates back to 1599. All but one of these houses were moved (yes, really!) to this site after it opened as a museum in 1964. The last family stayed in the house until 1965 – Barbara Abele being the eldest member – and some of the family’s living accommodation has been left as of that period. The traditional design hasn’t really changed since the 16th century and there are many such houses still in use today in the Black Forest:

Thee houses are all built into the hillside, often with the upper loft level being accessed from a road or track at the rear (uphill) side. They all have space for cattle, pigs, goats, and whatever else the farmer may have wished to keep. And there’s living accommodation for (typically) 8 – 12 people; family and farmworkers. They were built without chimneys. There were usually one or two open ranges in the large kitchen, and the smoke was allowed to disperse throughout the house. Above the ranges was a hood. Just a hood, not an extractor. In this hood, they hung meat – traditionally ham – in order to smoke, and hence, preserve it. So today, when you buy genuine Schwarzwälder Schinken (smoked ham), you’ll have a better idea of it’s heritage.

These are not small houses. They can be 100m by 75m, and have 3, 4 or 5 floors including the loft(s). Apparently, it took some 400-500 trees to build one of the farmhouses. It’s just as well there are a lot of trees in the Schwarzwald.

The original Bauernhof at Hausach, built in 1612

Detail of the front (facing into the valley) of the 1599 Bauernhof

One of the many still-in-use Bauernhöfe in the Black Forest

Kathryn & family departed for home. As the car park ticket for the museum was valid for 24 hrs, we decided to sleep there overnight. Our plan was to drive down to Titisee – further South in the Black Forest – the next morning and spend a few days there.

Mon 18th

Plan into action: We headed South from Hausach, the road climbing all the while. There were some serious climbs that I wasn’t entirely confident the van would make. It coped ok, though often screaming at 3500rpm doing 20mph in 2nd gear.

It had been a fairly chilly start in Hausach, and I couldn’t help but notice that we were doing a lot of climbing. I’ve also learned that the higher the altitude, the colder it generally gets. By the time we got to Triberg (Any tour you make to the Black Forest WILL include Triberg with its waterfalls and cuckoo clocks) we were at 680m above sea level and it was very cold. Time for a pause and reconsider our plan.,,

Titisee lies at 1190m. It was only about 7°C in Triberg. It was going to be colder in Titisee. We consulted the forecast using my ultra-speedy Edeka SIM card in my smartphone. When we did eventually get a phone signal good enough to give us an Internet connection, we could see it was not promising over the next several days.

So… There’s an area between the Black Forest and the Rhine / French border that’s allegedly the warmest part of Germany – The Kaiserstuhl. It’s a well-known (within Germany) wine-producing area and part of the Baden wine region. We’d not yet reached the road junction where we’d need to go either one way or the other. I.e. we were still on track for both possibilities, so no need to go back on ourselves.

As we climbed higher and it got colder still, there was no question. Decision made: head for the Kaiserstuhl. We made it to a very nice but not inexpensive campsite just outside Ihringen – about 30km from Freiburg. It provides free access to the adjoining Freibad (open-air swimming pool).

Tue 19th

Lay round the pool in the 22° of sunshine and had a beer on the terrace in the evening. Could it be we made the right decision in coming here? Cracked open a not inexpensive bottle of local wine – a Spätburgunder Weissherbst. A rosé we’ve had many times. This one was one of the least good. Can’t win ’em all.

Wed 20th

Part of the fee for staying on this campsite is a one-off tax of €1.70 per person. For this, in return, you get access to the Freibad; two free wine cellar tours with tastings (unfortunately only on days we’ll not be here); and – this is the biggy – completely free use of public transport throughout the Black Forest (with some conditions, obviously).

When we were at the Bauernhof museum the other day, I’d noticed the railway line snaking along the side of the road. We also noticed on the road map that it did a couple of convoluted loops at two points close by. Something that seemed worth investigating at first hand. And if we could do it for free…

So I spent an hour or so online looking at train timetables and connections and discovered it would be possible to do an entire loop through the Black Forest in one day. One or two of the connections would be tight, but it seemed do-able. And it would – of course – include the Schwarzwaldbahn that runs from Donaueschingen, heading NW through the Black Forest to Offenburg, past Hausach. All we had to do was to avoid any high-speed trains; inter-regional trains and some other kind of train I could find anything out about. We needed no tickets; only needing to show our Guest Card and photo ID to the conductor should we be asked.

It all worked perfectly. Ihringen to Freiburg. Freiburg to Neustadt. Neustadt to Donaueschingen. Donaueschingem to Offenburg, Offenburg to Frieburg, and Freiburg back to Ihringen. Six train connections, and all of them worked out ok. We had a 1 1/2 hour break at Donaueschingen – conveniently at lunchtime – giving us time to find a Gasthof and have a Käsespätzle (sorry – can’t be translated. Ask Joy to make some for you!) mit Röstzwiebeln (with roasted onions) each. Heavy fare, but very good.

The train journey was great, but perhaps not as great as I’d hoped. The two loops by Triberg passed by without my noticing them, and the train we were on had high-backed seats – very comfortable, but not great for spotting up-coming attractions as you couldn’t see past the seat in front. It turns out that the two loops are largely inside tunnels and they are done to gain/lose altitude in as tight a space as possible – a bit like planes circling over Kent waiting to land at Heathrow. The cost of the tickets for this journey, had we had to buy them, would have been around €65 each. Thank you Schwarzwald tourismus.

We’re now looking at heading out into France and somewhere warmer tomorrow, but the mad European weather is still holding firm. Even if we head to the far SW of France – near Bayonne / Biarritz – it’s still only 19°/20° for the next several days. Maybe we’ll head that way anyway and hope that – by the time we get there, which could be several days hence – it might warm up a bit (or a lot).

We’ll probably be without Internet again for much of the uncertain future. My German SIM card won’t work far into France, so not sure when I might be able to continue the story…

Igelsbachsee, Bayern

Wed 13th/Thur 14th Aug.

A very short drive has brought us to Igelsbachsee – a smaller lake separated from the larger Brombachsee by a dam/causeway.

Again; an excellent Stellplatz above the lake (it’s a stiff climb from the lake back to the Stellplatz) for up to 50 motorhomes. There are just 3 motorhomes here including ourselves. Not a single car in the car park. A ghost of an August. It’s cold and it’s raining.

In the morning, just time for a walk down to the lake and across the causeways.

A Plan of the lakes. We’re by Enderndorf on the join between Brombachsee and Igelsbachsee

There’s a fantastic marine vehicle just off the sandy beach. It’s a boat of some kind. I though at first it was some kind of dredger, but watching it, it became apparent that it was weeding the lake bed in front of the beach. Only in Germany! This is meant as a complement: The fastidiousness that compels them to clear the weeds from the bathing area for tourists at such enormous cost (heaven knows how much the machine cost) is quite something.

And in the afternoon – back to Ehningen in time for Clara’s 2nd birthday.