Friday, 1 June 2012

Lenzkirch-Kappel

Achdorf

30.9

458.4

Overcast with drizzle in the morning and partly cloudy in the afternoon

Scheffellinde Gasthof-Pension, Achdorf

Fruit salad, yoghurt, bread rolls and jam for breakfast; sausage and cheese salad and bread for lunch; soup, schnitzel "cordon bleu", vegetables and fries for dinner.

None really

I forgot to mention a funny incident when I arrived at last night's Gasthof.  There was a reasonably steeply sloping drive down to the front of the Gasthof on which a large delivery truck parked "nose down".  In front of the Gasthof, and below the truck, was an outside table where four old dears (70+yo) were enjoying a game of cards, drinking and eating ice-cream.  There was some good-natured banter going on between the 40+yo delivery driver and the women as I checked in.  The truck engine started then, suddenly, there was a screech and a bang followed by a lot of frightened screaming.  After starting the engine on his truck, instead of slowly backing up the hill, the driver let his truck roll down towards the women a few metres and then hit the brakes hard with about 2 metres to go.  I'm surprised we weren't dealing with four heart attacks.  Anyway, it made the women's day.

Breakfast wasn't until 8am and I came down a few minutes early to use the wi-fi to send some emails before going in and making a pig of myself again on the fresh bread rolls.  I left at 9am in a light drizzle with a wet day in prospect and followed some roads and then tracks through farmland before steeply descending into the valley of the Haslach River.  It was the start of an unexpectedly different and interesting day.

For the next 25 kilometres, instead of following high ridges as I had been doing in the Black Forest to date, I followed first the Haslach and then the Wutach Rivers through their spectacular limestone gorges.  The route involved every kind of trail from wide forestry roads to narrow technical and slightly scary cliff edge single-track.  The trail switched from one side of the river to the other and from water's edge to cliff top depending on the topology.   All along the way there was a feast of unusual limestone outcrops, some like old castles, strange waterfalls fashioned by limestone and moss, and beautiful groves of light and bright green silver birch.  In one place there were streams gushing out of the base of the limestone cliff wall.  The spectacle just seemed to go on and on and some of the best trail came near the end where the track had been cut high into the limestone cliffs with a sheer drop scores of metres to the water below.  Fortunately, someone had taken the trouble to install a star picket and wire fence, but I tried not to test it.  Just to add a bit of spice, the earlier rain, which cleared late morning, made the rocks and roots quite slippery.  I took many photos but it was impossible to capture the full picture.

Early on I had the trail to myself but, during the afternoon, it became quite busy with some large groups of hikers, many of them including children (I would have been quite anxious about taking some of the smaller children along those cliff edges).

I had lunch at a Gasthof along the way where the waitresses were all kitted out in the traditional gear but the meal was an over-priced disappointment.  I'm going to have to start carrying some basic lunch stuff that I can use in the case that I can't buy filled rolls somewhere.

The track finally emerged from the gorge through the middle of an operating sawmill, which was interesting, and then it was another 5km to the village of Achdorf where I found a Gasthof for the night.  It was only another 3km to Blumberg, a larger town where I would have had more accommodation options, but it was after 5:30pm and my feet had had enough for the day.  I will need to find somewhere in Blumberg tomorrow morning to buy another map because I'm almost off the edge of this one.

The restaurant in the Gasthof was very busy and the food was good.  No wi-fi tonight, but I do have BBC World Service, CNN and German French Open coverage on the TV.