Walking in the southern Black Forest Day 3 Blumberg to Schattenmuhle

Schleifenbach

Wutachmuhle

In the gorge

We had trouble with the Hotel Hirschen’s WiFi system. This may be related to the devices we were using: mobile phone, netbook or e-book reader. Whether this is a language problem, because our devices use English or whether the signal was not strong enough, we don’t know. In our experience it is not easy to use WiFi away from home as we found in several hotels underway. This is a plus point in our opinion. However mobile phone coverage in the gorge is very patchy as well, perhaps the perfect excuse when the boss complains that you could not be reached. More importantly, we enjoyed an excellent buffet breakfast, bought three filled rolls for lunch at €4 for the lot and walked back onto the trail. All of our hotels were within a few hundred metres of the trail. We followed Hauptstrasse west and then walked straight on to go down a steep path on the left. After some zigzags with serious exposure we reached a ladder with about 20 steps by the Schleifenbach waterfall – an impressive dark cove of rock. A climb followed along a forest and field path to the pretty village of Achdorf. We walked through the village  to reach the fields; followed a minor road, then crossed the Wutach to go through woods and clearings to reach the Wutachmuhle, an old mill. We wandered through the timber yard to follow the path in to the narrow, twisty Wutachschlucht. The path is technically difficult from time to time over tree roots, climbs very steeply over loose greasy stones, drops to rock shelves by the river and returns high over the river with a cliff face on one side and a vertical drop on the other. It is a spectacular experience, certainly no after lunch Sunday stroll. The route is popular and was busy with walkers coming towards us which slowed us down on the narrower sections. There was a lot of up and down before the day ended in the remote Gasthaus Schattenmühle, cut off from the outside world. The kitchen closed at 8 pm. Carbo-loading was the order of the day, so we ate excellent Rösti , topped with pork steaks or Black Forest Ham, followed by Kaiserschmarren. Our room was simple, but after 20km  and 380m climbing in about seven hours it was all we needed.