Time for an update. Since my last entry we have travelled a long way and had some great days out walking. For once, as planned we have made it where we wanted to go and I am writing this tonight in Donaueschingen, in the Black Forest in Germany, and at the source of the river Danube – or so they claim. I am always a little bit dubious about the locations of river sources, after all who decides which small tributary stream (or in Donaueschingen's case a spring) is the important one!!??
Anyway for those of you who are keeping track of our route; since my last entry when we were in central France we travelled on through Auxonne on the river Soanne and then to our final French town of Thann in Alsace.
We had our first experience of a mainland Europe border crossing last Friday on our way to Freiburg in Germany. The open borders and the Euro certainly make things easy for travelling around but I have to admit to the border being just a little bit unexciting! We just drove through on the motorway; past the old border posts and a sign saying "Bundes Republik Deutschland" and there we were….new country.
We arrived in Freiburg before lunch time and spent a wonderful afternoon wandering around in the sunshine. It was market day and there were lots of hotdog stalls which we failed to resist (or rather Chris found really rapidly!), and then we followed that with coffee in the town square and ice creams. A proper treat of a day! We both liked Freiburg, a really bustling town, with lots of beautiful old buildings, and I was taken with the wisteria which had been trained across the side streets, wonderful.
We left Freiburg on Saturday and drove out to the high Black Forest and a place called Bernau im Schwarzwald, an 8km long open valley some 900m above sea level surrounded by the higher forests and mountains (see pictures). Once again the van did superbly and the roads although quite steep and windy were very good. The weather was fantastic and we had great views of the snow covered peaks and wooded valleys as we drove in over the high pass.
We stayed in Bernau for 4 nights as it was such a wonderful spot and managed to get in some long walks every day. The highlight was Saturday when we walked up the highest peak (1415m, they give you heights on all the route markers!) in glorious sunshine and could just see the Alps in the distance from the top. We appeared to be just at the end of the snow melt and although the valleys were clear a lot of the higher paths had a good foot of snow still lying on them; this made the walking great fun although very tiring as now and then we sunk in to our knees. I was also victim to several snow balls during the course of the day!
We have had a much needet lazy day today driving here and wandering round town before hopefully a nice long cycle along the river tomorrow.
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