Honister Slate Mine to Keswick on Remembrance Day

On Remembrance Sunday 2013 we were stopping with friends in Keswick. They had volunteered to man the car park at the Honister Slate Mine to collect for the Poppy Appeal. There is a tradition in the Lake District that there is a Remembrance Day Service on Great Gable. The car park at the Honister Slate Mine is one of the nearest car parks to the peak.  Our friends had to be there by 07:00, so we left their home at 06:30 and climbed into their frozen car.

It was light by the time we reached the slate mine and we set off round the back of  the Youth Hostel following the miners' trail downhill. We'd decided not to go up to Great Gable because we would have needed to take the same way back against a flow of visitors, as our friends were due to stop chinking tins at 10:00. Our aim was to walk down to Grange in Borrowdale. 

The track was good, though slippery in parts and easy to follow. This was good as British waymarking is very patchy compared to the Teutonic systems we are used to. It was a very clear and fresh morning. The high peaks around had a dusting of snow from the storms of the day before. As the sun lit up the frost covered floor of Borrowdale it resembled nothing less than a water colour painting. We negotiated the back of Castle Crag with care as the way was steep with many loose stones. We had a cup of tea and a piece of cake in the Grange Cafe. Our friends arrived and suggested that we walk back to Keswick. We did not hesitate and took the Panorama Way overlooking Derwent Water before dropping into Portinscale and the outskirts of Keswick. Length 17km - about 10 miles.

Even if you have not got friends prepared to offer their car as a taxi service you can take a bus from Keswick up the pass in summer that will bring you to the slate mine. The Slate Mine has a cafe and sells excellent bacon butties amongst other items.

Leaving the slate mine car park.

Looking down into Borrowdale

Castle Crag to the right. Derwent Water and  Skiddaw to the front.

Derwent Water

Aldi walking gear

Some time ago I was amused to see a note on the BikeRadar blog about ALDI's cycling gear. Our outdoor cupboards show lots of Crane labels. We have bought both cycling and walking gear from ALDI-Sued over the last few years. The gear is excellent. I have recently acquired a couple of Crane polyester walking shirts and in spite of their cost, i.e. €9.99 they are very comfortable and warm. OK they don't have the zipped pockets and hanging tabs that the Rohan shirts feature, but they are a factor of four cheaper. ALDI-Sued socks wear well.
Obviously if your life depends on your gear then it's a wise idea to buy a well known brand, but if like us you are just going hill walking at low levels and you are not worried about status then ALDI's walking clothing fits the bill. It is mostly not made in Europe but there again most of the big names are embroidered on clothing made in the far east. If one of them starts to make stuff in Europe again then we would change our suppliers. I suspect though in this case, it is not a wise policy to hold my breathe.

Walking in Vogtland

Near our hotel

Last week we spent a week walking in Vogtland, east of Hof and Bayreuth (Bavaria) and stopped in Bad Elster, (Saxony) one of a number of spa towns in the area.  The area is criss-crossed by well waymarked trails. The town of Bad Elster is good base. There are regular concerts, a magnificent baths and some good cafés. There is a basic public transport system: Buses and a railway line south into the Czech Republic and north to the German mainline railway system. The one snag is that the railway station is 3km out of town. None of the normally well organised Germans seems to have thought of a shuttle bus to link the station and the town, so it was Shanks’ Pony which made for a long day.
We walked between 15 and 20km most days through woods and across open fields with good views of the Vogtland hills. For me the two high spots were:

Františkovy Lázně 

• A good day walking from Cheb to Františkovy Lázně (Franzenbad) passing a volcano investigated by Goethe. The site is marked by a plaque in German. Františkovy Lázně is elegant in a French Empire style and has numerous springs where one can take the waters. They taste healthy, uugh! The Czech - German border is open thanks to the Schengen Agreement.
• The day we walked across the heathlands to Markneukirchen, a centre of quality musical instrument manufacturing, (The cheap stuff is made in Asia.) The museum there has a fantastic display of musical instruments. It also has an excellent value for money café on the main drag where we made up our missing calories after the exertions of the walk. Prices here are less than farther west, but are still higher than in the Czech Republic which are ridiculously cheap: Three of us ate a three course lunch with a genuine Budweiser beer in a very comfortable restaurant near Cheb for €20 total.
  

Walking in the southern Black Forest Day 6 St Blasien to Todtmoos

The view from our hotel window

Open fields and forests

The "monster" at work

The Fairy Glen

Another wonderfully sunny morning, though some of the "spectacle viewers" of the night before, a little short of sleep, had a somewhat jaundiced view of the world. We walked through the town and could stock up on a sandwich for lunch, before diving under the bypass to climb steeply over Lehenkopf with the Bismarck Tower. There were already excellent views of the cathedral and the cloister buildings, so we did not climb the tower, but made our excuses and left. We walked down into the pub at Klosterweiher where we enjoyed a Radler before climbing 2km to the Kreuzfelsenhutte shelter hut to eat our sandwiches. We could have had lunch in the pub, but a beer  and a large lunch slows us up even more in the afternoon. We continued on through forests and around fields containing a bull, a number of cows and calves to climb to the Peace Cross above Ibach where we were promised a view of the Alps. It is more than likely true on a cold clear day, but with the haze it was difficult to recognise anything, though J and C swore they could see snowy peaks through binoculars. We crossed open country and climbed into forest where we were treated to a display of modern forestry techniques. A monstrous machine was reducing large trees to matchsticks. After another a stretch of forest we crossed the main road to walk steeply into the Hohwehraschlucht  (Upper Wehra Gorge). The last part of the route before Todtmoos was an interesting path through a “fairy glen”, a babbling brook, pools and light and shad from a variety of trees.

Walking in the southern Black Forest Day 5 Fischbach to St Blasien

Breakfast at the hotel was reasonable but a bus party had played the flight of locusts just before us and pickings were rather thin. Neither baker nor butcher were within view as we left the Gasthof Hirschen, so we could not buy sandwiches for lunch. Our first priority was to buy victuals. The wide farm track by the hotel led to a gentle climb through the forest over Bildstein peak (1130m) where we had good views of Lake Schluchsee. We dropped down a winding narrow path down to Aha Bahnhof (Railway station) on the lakeside. The kiosk there was not yet open, so we went on to Aha and bought dry Brötchen (rolls) in the kiosk at the start of the hamlet. We still had a tin of sardines.  As we found out there was only one other chance before St Blasien to obtain refreshments. We walked round the lake on a wide unsealed road with many other walkers and cyclists, who were only going as far as the café at Unterkrummen (4km). After the café we climbed over Krummer Kreuz on forest roads. Although it remained dry the weather was overcast and much cooler. There were a number of traditional Black Forest farmhouses with their bonnet-like roofs stretching along the Halbmoosbächle Valley. In Althütte we caught glimpses of what we decided was Lake Constance. A steep drop past the Windberg Waterfall brought us into St Blasien on a pretty but difficult path, in another gorge much strewn with large trees blown down in a great storm. We arrived at the hotel by 16:00 and spent some time out in the town victualling, so did not have our usual late afternoon siesta. St Blasien was in the hands of amateur thespians, some of whom we observed over an excellent coffee and cake. The town organises an annual son et lumière event and that night was the first night. Our hotel, Dom Hotel was in front of the cathedral and at the back of the viewing stands, but within hearing distance. The event started at 21:15, finished shortly before midnight and the audience must have been glad of woolly jumpers and/or quilts. Temperatures were low below 10°C. I was worried I wouldn't be able to sleep, I dozed off while watching the beginning and slept well until early the next morning.

Climbing out of Fischbach

First view of Lake Schluchsee

Black Forest farmhouse

Descending to St Blasien 

Walking in the southern Black Forest Day 4 Schattenmuhle to Fischbach

The hotel did not offer a breakfast buffet as was usual at the other hotels, but we had a good choice of ham, Wurst, cheese, jam and honey to go with rolls, bread, coffee and tea. There were no shops for miles so we enquired whether we could purchase three dry rolls to make our sardine sandwich lunch and were given three. We left the hotel and climbed steeply then followed a high level path via Räuberschlössle - the Robbers’ Little Castle which is the remains of a castle on a peak later taken over by gangs of low life types. It would be an ideal place to set a Swallows and Amazons story. We walked on and passed the Stallegg hydro power station, one of Germany’s first hydropower stations. It did not appear to be functioning when we were there. The dam was empty. Perhaps the station was being maintained. During the next kilometers into Lenzkirch crisscrossing a former railway line now used as a cycleway it seemed that we no sooner reached the summit than we dropped again in order to climb back up again. I suspect it is better to follow the cycle path into Lenzkirch and would have done this but my companions had moral fibre. We had to walk the whole route with no compromises. We had a coffee break in the Kurhaus before we began the long climb to Fischbach over Fischerbacher Höhe (1101m). Initially it was very pleasant in the shady woods up to the Geopark with its mini library and chunks of local rocks, but when we came out in the open fields by the Cyriak Chapel walking there was some sweating and puffing. The road seemed to go on forever. We dropped into Fischbach and arrived at the Gasthof Hirschen after 22.5km with 600m climbing. We very were pleased to be offered a Radler as a welcome drink.

The library at the Geopark site

Discussing erratics

Nothing better than a shandy after a long day

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.